The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero
by Vile Slanders
Summary: I am not the King. That is a Ranger's Beret on my head, not a crown. So you want to know what happened after the Championships? You want to know my role in the disaster that unfurled when the Brink opened? You want to know if I stepped into the Brink, and how I'm still alive if I did? Well, I'll tell you. But Zane Bastard is starting from the relevant beginning. This is my story...
1. Prologue: A New Reign

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 **The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero**

 _Written by,_

 **Vile M.F. Slanders**

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" _ **...In Pace, Ut Sapiens, Aptarit Idonea Bello... (...In peace, like a wise man, he appropriately prepares for war...)" -**_ _The PKMN Ranger's motto._

 **-v-**

 **Prologue: A New Reign**

"What the hell do you lot want?"

"..."

"Really?"

"..."

"Don't ask why."

"..."

"King?"

"..."

"What do you mean, King? The King is dead."

"..."

"No, I'm not."

"..."

"Then tell them to stop calling me the King."

"..."

"Fine. I'll tell you."

"…"

"...-"

"-..."

"-...-"

"Stop. Stop with the fucking questions. One at a fucking time. You. Front row, in the seedy blue sweater."

"...-"

"I didn't ask who you represent, just ask your fucking question."

"..."

"What? Are you fucking serious? Alright. You know what? Screw this shit. I'll start from the fucking beginning. The very fucking beginning."

"..."

"Before that, asshole. Before I met the fucking King."

"..."

"Yeah, that's right. A year ago."

"..."

"I assure you, it has _everything_ to do with this."

"..."

"An autobiography? What the fuck-? Sure, whatever floats your fucking boat."

"...-"

"Don't you dare call me King."

.-.-.-.-.

._^_^_.

*_.{ **PKMN** }._*

\\.{Ranger}./

.Zane.

*-.v.-*

My name is Zane. Yes, that's my name. Yes, actually. Zane isn't my real name. It's the name I chose for my Ranger's Badge. And it's the name written on my Trainer's License. My real name? Unimportant. Everything I was before Zane was only something building up to him. Whatever I was called before Zane… No value.

Right, anyways…

Oh really?

Yeah, I'm sure to your eyes, I'm just another dropout Greenback. Just another fruitless delinquent still wearing his battle dress and beret in a vain effort to appear like he isn't a complete failure. Just another Ranger who quit. Guess what?

I'm still on the payroll.

Yep, a lone Ranger, miles away from any outpost. Still on active duty, with only my radio linking me to command. No commanding officers present to hold my leash. A free bird, with clipped wings. That's me.

So what is an active Ranger doing here in Pewter City? Challenging the Gym Leader. Duh.

Oh I get it. Just because I'm a Ranger, it obviously means that I'm expressively forbidden from competing in Pokemon battles. That clause doesn't apply to me. Sure, my mon may be trained to kill other mon, but I can keep them restrained.

Accidents?

Let me tell _you_ something about "accidents."

Three years ago-

Wait, what you do mean, you don't have time for this? You fucking asked me a Goddamn question, now sit your snotty prepubescent ass down, and listen to my fucking answer!

Seriously?

Okay... Mommy and daddy have never chewed your ass out before, have they?

Ranger's Tip: If you're gonna cry like a little bitch when somebody yells at you, hang your fucking belt up. You just aren't ready for the world beyond these walls.

Really? That Rattata is gonna protect you from a rampaging Nidoking, huh?

No. It won't. It'll get killed and eaten, probably not in that order. What do you do next?

Run? From a pissed off Nidoking? You fucking with me? No. You die. And get eaten. Not in that order.

Really? Okay, after I'm done smearing your Rattata's ass across six separate districts, I'm revoking your Trainer's License.

Yeah, actually. I can. I'm a Ranger, remember?

Why?

Because you're not fucking ready.

…

Three years ago, I was what you would call a typical teen. Just your typical Celadon City fourteen year old overachiever, with somebody else's grand plan for them spanning the rest of his life. A straight 'A' student with a promising future, all squandered when he enlisted into the Pokemon Ranger Corps. My mom and dad were not happy, but at least it wasn't the military. That said, when they found out about my ambitions, my old man did everything he could to keep me out of the recruiters office.

But just like Bugs-Lopunny and Blaze-Horn-Kick-Horn, the wacky wabbit eventually got into the Torchic coop. Sure, Dad might have gotten the last, very loud, word; and Mom was crying up a storm… But I got my papers. I swore my oath. One family-unbonding and traumatizing week later, I was at boot camp, after being told never to come home again.

If you're still out there, Dad?

Fuck you.

And fuck your fucking home.

To be honest, despite my animosity towards my parents… It was a recent development. One that took years of clandestine martial training to get over. Before I swore myself into the Ranger Corps, my family and I got together swimmingly. A kindhearted, nurturing mother, always there to listen to my daydreams. My grounded, realistic father, rarely there, but when he was; he made sure that his affection for his son was known by grooming me into the family business. Both took care of me. Both loved me. Both wanted the best for me. Yeah, it was a dreamy life. Hell, had I stayed with it, I might have joined my father's financial ranks as a millionaire.

Fuck that.

I was born on the wild side. I didn't want a Investment-Consultant position in Silph Co. agenda. I didn't want to head overseas to sit in a cozy Devon Market Committee lounge. I knew what I wanted.

I wanted to wear a Black Beret.

Yep, the first time I ever saw a Blackhat was in Cerulean's one-hundred-and-thirty-second National Parade of Stations. Team seven. All sixteen members. All riding their giant fucking Gyaradosia. I was five. How could I not want to be one of those scary fucking blacked out figures, riding on top of one of those scary fucking dragon-snakes, wearing a scary fucking expression that read:

"I don't give a fuck."

Yeah, I wanted that at five. Nothing's changed. I'm still trying for that Black Beret, even if I know that my medical history is going to stop me. Anyways…

Spent six months as a Ranger Cadet, got my E-3 Rocker Stripe insignia two months in as a recruit. That's PFC, or Private First Class. Noticed for exceptional service with eight months served total. Now that's Corporal Zane.

Made Warrant Officer at sixteen years of age. I was a Goddamn prodigy.

Sixteen also happened to be the age where I could apply for my PKMN Trainer's Licence. If you want to rise above enlisted, you've got to get that bloody License.

Anyone can tell you how easy it is to get your Trainer's License. Shit, they practically hand them out like Combee-comb candy nowadays.

And that's probably why the Trainer mortality rate is so Goddamn high.

Great idea, Indigo. Let's give every stupidly naive sixteen year old the opportunity to make friends with a fucking homicidal monster, and then send them out into a world full of even less stable fucking homicidal monsters.

But from a eugenicist's perspective, you politicians made Darwin proud. The old Darwin, asshat. Not mine.

The reason for the age being so stupidly low, is because of fucking tradition. Back before we kicked our habit of trying to mass-produce everything that we wanted, back before we figured out that our guns and bombs weren't going to save us, back when we finally realized that our tenure as Earth's dominant species was over…

...You were expected to die fighting at sixteen years of age. It made sense. So did teen pregnancy. I mean shit, the average life expectancy was barely thirty years. Most people died before eighteen. It's a wonder that we avoided the Dark Ages for three whole centuries AFTER the Brink Collapse.

But now? Now, when society has finally established a foothold? Now when the pre-Brink technology has finally returned, adapted for this new monster infested world? It just isn't necessary to die at sixteen. For all our evolution these past fifteen-hundred years…

The human species still has a long way to go.

Either way… Back to my illustrious origins.

Chief Warrant Officer Zane Bastard. I got promoted about a week ago. Actually yes, I refer to myself as bastard. Zane may be my name of choice, but my fellow Cadets way back in boot camp knew me as "The Bastard." Given my family history, I made the nickname my last name. And it stuck. My fellow Warrant Officers neglected "Zane," in favor of "Fucking Bastard." But my superiors just know me as Bastard. But you, civilian? You fucking call me Chief Warrant Officer Zane. Only Greenbacks get to call me Bastard.

So I got my Trainer's License, and I got the first Block on my insignia, and then… I got my first mon.

But before that, I should explain what this esteemed Chief Warrant Officer's field of expertise is in the Ranger Corps.

I'm a combat engineer. AKA, a Sapper. Positioned on the front, blow torch in one hand, pokeball in the other. Five pounds of C4 and two kilogram-and-a-half tubes of thermite strapped to my back. And that's just for taking out a Beedrill hive. You should see the ordnance I get to play with when we need to eradicate a Tentacruel infestation. I fucking love fly fishing with an ANFO packed lure…

Oh yeah... Sorry about that. I just took a fond trip down old memory lane. Back to the story. Originally, I just planned to be a Field-Technician. Run cables, fix radio towers, wire new outposts, fix broken Ranger equipment, et cetera, et cetera… Sounds boring, right?

It was. But it was the best chance I had at getting under a Black Beret. You see, contrary to popular belief, there are a lot of gung-ho, neck-snapping, Ursaring-wrestling, Muk-spitting, Probopass chewing badass motherfuckers in the Ranger Corps. And they only take the pick of the litter for the Blackhats.

But Field-Technicians? Smart, driven ones who can operate under extreme duress?

There aren't many smart motherfuckers in the Ranger Corps. Just saying.

Yep, I had ten times the opportunity to wear a Black Beret just by proving I'm smarter than the average Joe. But even with the ten times multiplier? My chances rose from Torchic shit-nothing, to Tepig shit-nothing. But I'd still take those chances. That was, right up until I met Vauban.

Vauban. My first mon. Bred by Chimera Industries' Waterloo Division. Same fucking state of the art facility that the Military gets their war mon from. She's a sixth generation High-Offensive Bulbasaur, hereditarily superior to every other Bulbasaur in the Indigo League's Registration Archives. She's fed a Top-Secret, Toxin Homogenized, Pokeroid Infused Fertilizer that you can't even buy on the black market. Starting on the very first day she shucked off her eggshell, she's been mentally and physically conditioned to engage wild pokemon with extreme prejudice and deadly force. Genetically altered chloroplasts for increased metabolic rate and enhanced neural reactions when exposed to ultra-dense UV rays. Taught battle techniques explicitly outlawed for use in restricted competition by the League Legislation for being too "Reckless" and too "Endangering." And ready to lay her life down for the piece of shit Greenback who shares an exact replica of her G.I. barcode tattoo, right on the exact same shoulder that she anatomically reflects.

Vauban. She's the sweetest damn thing I'll ever know, and there isn't poon beguiling enough on this planet of earth to ever come between us.

Girls, if it creeps you out, then find another stud. But if you and I are going to get our freak on…

-Vauban gets front row seats and first dibs on the back massage. Her popcorn and protein drinks compliments of your sexy-man host.

I love my Vauban. Even if she is a mon.

How did we first meet? Never met a Ranger, have you? Roll Call. You see, in the Ranger Corps, unlike the military; we actually get to chose our mon, rather than have them assigned to us based off of our field of expertise. Yeah, Rangers call it "Role Call," because there's a Role Call that starts the selection process off.

Vauban was an irregularity. She was the first Bulbasaur to ever be dispatched to the Rangers. She was meant to go into Military service as a Saboteur unit, but lucky for her, the Military withdrew her requisition. Vauban is too good to be a Saboteur. And even a mon hater like me clams up when I think about Vauban being deployed as a single-use bio-bomb. Vauban is way too good for hypermetabolism therapy and septic overload stimulation.

If you want to blow a mon up, just to make a shit load of lethal neurotoxins spread out in a four klick radius, then use a fucking Vileplume.

Ever talk about using a Bulbasaur as a bomb around me…

I'll leave you wishing that it was a Saboteur's dispersal that killed you.

Ahem…

Either way, Vauban was the first Bulbasaur I ever saw. She really didn't look that imposing with a Houndour sitting on one side of her, and a Rhyhorn on the other. But those were common mon in the Rangers. Try as they might, everybody's eyes kind of meandered away from the standard line of Growlithes, Poliwags, Woopers, Spearows, Dodous, Mankeys, Sandshrews, Drillburs, and even the rare Ponyta; just to stare at the diminutive green dinosaur that couldn't have looked any more out of place.

Every other mon looked fierce, hardened, battle ready, dangerous. The Bulbasaur just yawned cutely and rolled onto her side.

I immediately knew who I didn't want as my first mon.

The Mankey: Who shat in one hand and took a deep whiff of it, before flinging his steaming excrement right into the Ponyta's face.

I hate all of the primate pokemon with a specially reserved passion just because of that Mankey. No self-respecting animal should sniff its own poo.

After the CO's Poliwrath had calmed every mon down, and whipped the fucking Mankey into a bloody stutter, Roll Call began.

I wasn't the first name on the list. I was a freshly minted Warrant Officer, and several others had my accolades beat by seniority. So I was number five on the list.

Predictably, the Ponyta went first. Even with a face coated in Mankey dung, it was still the most desirable mon on the roster. I didn't sweat it. Ponytas and their evolved form, Rapidash, are favorite mounts among Rangers, and even somewhat useful in combat. But they were not the best compliment as far as Technician work went. Anyways, I had my heart set on a Gyarados, the signature mount ridden by every Blackhat.

The Houndour and one of the two Rhyhorns went next. Then name number four was called.

Thank God. The gurning, sick fuck picked the Mankey. I was afraid that the little simian-suidae shit was going to muss up my plan.

"Warrant Officer Zane Bastard."

My call. Showtime.

I didn't point to any particular mon when I sauntered out into the field. I didn't bark a mon's species, and order its subservience to my side. I didn't do a damn thing that everyone else always did.

I marched out into the center of the field. I assumed the attention stance.

Then plopped right down on my Officer bum in one swift descending motion.

I got a lot of stares, and not just from the mon. I could feel every petty officer's eyes grilling the back of my neck. My CO cleared his throat, but he failed to reprimand me for my breach of etiquette. Leaving me to sit on the ground in front of all those confused mon.

You see, I'm a mon hater. I hate- Fucking _hate_ Pokemon. It might have something to do with me joining an outfit that has dedicated itself to the eradication of Pokemon. Or maybe it was an inherited prejudice from my old man. Probably both. Either way, I didn't want a single fucking one of those low down, belly dragging, mouth breathing, child killing shitsticks. But I had to get one. I needed to start Training. Otherwise, that Black Beret would never crown my head.

Call it cold blooded ambition. I really don't give a fuck. We spent fifteen-hundred years killing and getting killed by mon in an effort to hold onto a world that wasn't theirs. They invaded us, and we lost. That kind of conflict leaves scars. Those scars beget memories. And those memories…

They run deep. Generations deep. Now, before joining the Rangers, I never had a single bad experience with a pokemon in my life. I didn't really meet any, raised in a cushy, bigoted household; where the only mon I ever came into contact with were the ones that were served on a dinner plate.

But I heard stories. War stories. Family stories. I saw video recordings, fifteen hundred years old, detailing the Brink Collapse in all its human helplessness and immeasurable carnage. I remember watching a troop of MBTs line all four guns on a Steelix rampaging through Manhattan center. I watched as four one-hundred-and-ten millimeter Tungsten sabots slammed directly into the giant damn metal snake. I watched as it shook them off like snowflakes. I watched the next salvo make contact, and I watched as this previously impossible monster grew annoyed.

And then I watched the Steelix crush the old MBTs like they were made out of tin foil.

That wasn't the only haunting video I played witness too. There were worse. A lot worse. Have you ever seen the footage of Regigigas rising out of the Altyn Tagh fault? That fault line used to be part of a mountain range in India. You don't know what India is?

It was a continent. We don't know what happened to it. We just know that a monster the size of a fucking mountain rose from the Earth and made a landmass disappear, leaving only a cold ocean where a dry piece of our planet once stood.

So yeah, hate runs deep. And my family was one of the many who never forgot that. Guess that's why I wanted to be a Blackhat.

A member of the mon-killing Elite. The best of the best. The scariest motherfuckers you'd ever hope to never come across.

Well… The second scariest. TH has the Blackhats soundly beat in the "human shit you'd never want to meet" department. But we'll get to that in good time. Right now, I'm talking about Role Call. And how a Warrant Officer Zane Bastard was fucking with due procedure.

I was content to just sit in middle of all those pokemon, glaring at each one in turn, making my hatred of their species known by the bearing of my eyes. Daring just one of them to step forward and challenge that malice.

One minute, twenty three seconds. The Doduo shuffled his feet.

Two minutes, thirteen seconds. The Poliwags began to wither.

Three minutes, thirty four seconds. The remaining Rhyhorn grunted uncomfortably, and averted his eyes. I'd been holding his gaze for over a minute, never blinking or showing any hint of backing down. Nice try, big guy. Now kindly choke on shit and die.

Three minutes, fifty one seconds. My CO coughed. The other Warrant Officers were grumbling. But the fucking Spearows just couldn't take the hint.

Five minutes, fourteen seconds. The Spearows were less than meat. The Growlithes didn't offer a moment of resistance. They started whineing nervously when I glanced at them.

Six minutes, twenty nine seconds. My fellow Warrant Officers were vocalizing their complaints. They wanted a turn at picking something. The CO was getting impatient too, but he knew that I was up to something, so he was content to stand by. I didn't waste my ocular loathing on the Woopers. You can't get hatred through that level of inherent stupidity without some serious domestic abuse to back it up.

Seven minutes, three seconds. The Sandshrews were collectively feeling like a mere two inches of smeared shit. Now for the Bulbasaur.

Seven minutes, forty seconds. The Bulbasaur had blinked plenty, but no look that I could throw was going to wipe that oblivious expression of happiness off of her green face.

Eight minutes, eleven seconds. The Bulbasaur wiggled her haunches excitably.

Eight minutes, fifteen seconds. The Bulbasaur took a hesitant step forward.

Eight minutes, seventeen seconds. The Bulbasaur took a self-conscious step back.

Eight minutes, nineteen seconds. The Bulbasaur took another step forward. Followed by another.

Eight minutes, twenty six seconds. The Bulbasaur was standing two inches away from my crossed legs.

Eight minutes, twenty nine seconds. The Bulbasaur yawned sweetly again, and then proceeded to curl up into my lap.

Eight minutes, thirty seven seconds. The Bulbasaur was softly snoring, and my hand was gently caressing her head.

Eight minutes, forty two seconds. Warrant Officer Zane Bastard stood up with a sleeping Bulbasaur cradled in his arms, and returned to the human line.

Eight minutes, forty seven seconds. Roll called name number six. Number six picked the crestfallen Rhyhorn from the depressed fold, and the Bulbasaur sank her serrated needle teeth into my hand, letting me know that her belly was not for rubbing.

One hour, six minutes, nine seconds. I received the Bulbasaur's official dispatch, wrote my name on the dotted line, put my service tag next to the date, and wrote "Vauban" under "PKMN Callsign."

Despite myself, I was already fostering a strong liking for the little bitch.

That was my Vauban. And when I learned that she had originally been trained for lethal engagement with other pokemon…

I requested immediate redeployment to the Sapper Division, under the premise that I quote:

"Field-Tech is for pussies. Give me the hardcore shit."

Three days later, Vauban and I found ourselves transferred to the Viridian Forest Sapper Training Outpost.

Three months after making pole position on the Sapper trainees' top shit list, I requested "Special Operations Training" from the Outpost's command.

Two hours later, I was beaten senseless, gagged, blindfolded, and hogtied; before being dumped thirty klicks deep into uncharted territory with nothing more than a uniform, a BAMF, my beret, and Vauban's Pokeball.

Special Operations Training. That was a fucking picnic, let me tell you.

It was almost more than I could I chew. It was just about enough to make me choke.

But I don't swallow. And I sure as hell don't spit.

One Big-Ass-Mother-Fucking knife, or a "BAMF," as we Rangers nicknamed them. All the rope that I'd been bound with. The black bandana that had been used to blindfold me, and the kinky gag ball that had been some Operative's fucked up idea of a joke.

About a thousand fucking bruises, one broken leg, and a dislocated shoulder.

Vauban had it even worse.

Two weeks alone in the uncharted region of the Viridian forest.

No radio, no MREs, no medical kit, not even a roll of gauze.

Live? No fucking way. Die? Oh, hell no. Survive? Only option.

We made it, of course. I wouldn't be here now if I didn't. You might have been wondering where I got the chip on my shoulder from? Hint: It wasn't from my old man.

Special Operations Training. And surviving the Viridian forest was only initiation.

I wear that black bandana proudly. There's an insignia colored in red on it, with the Ranger' motto written in silver.

" _ **...In Pace, Ut Sapiens, Aptarit Idonea Bello... "**_

I was the youngest Operative to undergo Special Operations Training in over two centuries. Most who try it, fail.

Those who fail, die.

So what the fuck was wrong with me? Why the hell would anyone request that kind of punishment?

Because it looks damn good on my resume, and I have ambitions.

After that, I enrolled myself and Vauban in Advanced Combat training, worked my way up the Seniority list, bought the single biggest mistake of my life, Darwin: my morbidly obese Magikarp, and put in a requisition for an additional mon. Hunter-Killer classification. Specifically, a Growlithe, pretrained by the Military.

The rest is fucking history.

And I'll tell you about it later.

Now get that fucking Rattata on the field. Vauban missed lunch today, and I'm sure that domesticated Rattata tastes even better than feral.


	2. Chapter I: Helpless

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 **The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero**

 _Written by,_

 **Vile M.F. Slanders**

 **.\\./.\\./.\\./.\\./.\\./.**

 ***T...T...T...T***

 **I-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-I**

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 **V-._.-V**

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 **V**

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 _ **"...Morituri Te Salutamus... (...We who are about to die, salute you...)**_ " _-The Last Words, made in sacrifice; Ranger's Oath, Line 17_

 **-v-**

 **Chapter I: Helpless**

"I just checked with the nurse. They said your rodent will be fine." I sat down next to the shaken youth who I had met on the outskirts of Pewter City. He was looking pretty torn up.

So was his Rattata.

"Listen. I'm putting your License on temporary suspension. Six months probation. You can reapply for the PKMN-T.A.R.E. in four months. But you won't be permitted to reclaim your rat from impound until your probation expires and you pay the storage fee." I wasn't being very nice, and my Colonel's disembodied voice berated me for my cruelty.

" _...Remember, the objective is to establish good relations with the Trainer community. Think of yourself as a recruiting agent…"_

I gritted my teeth as the memory of my mission locked my neck muscles in a jarring rage.

"Actually… Three months. And I'm waiving the storage fee. You will still have to complete and pass the PKMN-T.A.R.E. though. I'd suggest completing the exam within the first month of your probation. That way, all your files will be in order by the end of your suspension." I only growled the beginning. Being nice wasn't something Rangers are known for. But my mercy seemed appreciated. The kid sniffled. He was obviously relieved that I had decided against permanently revoking his Trainer's license. And now, I had cut his sentence in half. Yeah, I was being _really_ nice for a Ranger.

"So what did you learn?" I asked the kid in a gravelly tone. He looked up at me in shock.

"Anything?" I asked, growing irritated. The kid looked away and began to shake. But I saw the signs.

"Yeah, you did. I can see your ears turning red, and your eyes avoiding mine. So what did you learn?" I pressed.

"Don't sass a Ranger?" The kid tried. I snorted.

"An invaluable fucking lesson. But what was the second lesson?" I wasn't letting him off. He had to say it, even if he didn't know the words that could express it.

"You learned what it feels like to be helpless." I growled. The kid jerked up.

"It's a great lesson to learn, and you're fortunate enough to have learned it from a Ranger. What do you think would have happened if you'd learned it from a feral?" At this rate, I could make a fucking Drill Sergeant out of myself in a week.

"I'd get hurt?" The kid tried again. I couldn't suppress a groan.

"Been watching reruns of the old cartoons, haven't you?" I sounded nothing short of derisive.

"No, you would have died. If you were lucky, whatever feral attacked you would've been content with just killing and eating your Rattata, which would have given you a chance to escape. But then again, you're too stupid to abandon your mon and save your own skin, aren't you?" My words were destroying the kid. But I wasn't finished.

"How's the eye?" I asked snidely. The kid raised a hand to gingerly press the bruised, swollen flesh that had once been his left eyelid.

"It hurts." He answered, his trembling voice hinting that he was about to start bawling again.

"You're the dumbass who assaulted a Ranger when he told his Bulbasaur to disembowel your Rattata. Do you know what the punishment is for attacking a Ranger in uniform?" I asked, my voice growing both dark and deep. The kid shuddered.

"A black eye for minors. Anything I can justify as self-defense for legal adults." I gave him my best 'you're lucky I didn't kill you' grin. Teeth clenched, spittle bubbling, temples throbbing, bloodshot crazy eyes glaring and all.

"So how did you like being rendered helpless?" I asked in a menacing voice. The kid shrank down into the fetal position.

"I didn't."

"Good. Being helpless isn't fun. And it's rarely healthy. Use that. Turn it into humility. Learn caution. Live." I grunted. The kid choked up a bit. I had a sneaking suspicion that he was beginning to like me on some mentorial level. Impressionable. Kids are funny like that.

"Learn fucking caution cold-shit. That way, in three months time, you don't have to worry about sacrificing your little rat for your own useless hide." I was sounding grouchy. So was Vauban. I could hear my little girl's stomach rumbling a room away. I stood up.

"Vauban." My voice took on the monotone of command. Vauban looked up from the Pokemon Center's playpen, a Clefairy toy dangling from her mouth.

"Front and center." Vauban dropped the toy, and responded accordingly. I looked down at my little girl with a sigh. She was trying. I could tell that she wasn't comfortable maintaining a stern expression. And her eyes were far from disciplined. They looked up at me with uncertainty, searching my face for some sign of approval.

"I'm sorry, Vauban." I meant it, and my voice told her as much. But she didn't scrunch up. She took my foot to the flank like a good little monster. I sent that poor Bulbasaur sailing into the opposite wall.

The entire Pokemon Center froze. This qualified as pokemon abuse, blatantly displayed in public. But Vauban wasn't a pokemon. She was a Ranger.

I left the stunned kid on his seat, and ignored the cries of outrage from the Pokemon Center's staff. I strode right over to where Vauban was picking herself up off the floor. Vauban looked up at me with hurt in her eyes, but she wasn't emotionally wounded by my actions.

Vauban was ashamed because she had failed me.

"Rangers." I kicked Vauban into the wall again.

"Do not." I stomped on Vauban's toes, exerting just enough pressure to cause her to squeal, but not enough to do any lasting damage.

"Play." I punctuated with another kick, the hardest of them all. Many of the trainers present were on their feet, some looking livid enough to attack me.

"On your feet, Vauban." I ordered, and my injured Bulbasaur complied. I sighed again. She was shaken, limping, wounded, and wearing a face as guilty as cardinal sin. But she wasn't mean yet. Vauban was a sweetheart, damned to live her life as a Ranger. She may have loved me, but she wasn't supposed to. I didn't know if I could ever make Vauban mean. Sometimes, I wondered if I actually wanted to make my little girl hate me.

I knelt down, and probed her for any serious damage.

"Are you outta your Goddamn-"

"-What the fuck, man?!"

"-Somebody call the police!"

"-Don't you touch that Bulbasaur, you monster-killing fuck!"

I tuned everyone out. These were Trainers, not Rangers. They didn't have a fucking clue what they were talking about. Examination complete, I rose from my trembling mon, and turned around to face the music.

"I'd put that holocaster down if I was you." I growled to the nearest Trainer. He shot me a look that could've killed a Pidgey stone cold dead, and punched a three digit number into the device.

"Police, yeah I'd like to report-" His holocaster was in my hands faster than he could blink, and at my ear before his brain could figure out where his holocaster had gone.

"Ranger Zane Bastard, reporting civilian harassment in Ranger affairs."

"..."

"Oh, I thought I recognised your voice. Gail, right?"

"..."

"Tammy, sorry."

"..."

" _Officer_ Tammy. Affirmative."

"..."

"Gail? I don't know any Gails. I thought you were Gail. Or should I say, _Officer_ Gail?"

"..."

"Ah, well. I suppose that I could let the civi off. Saves you the paperwork, right, _Officer_ Tammy?

"..."

"Oh, so I can call you Tammy again? That's so sweet of you."

"..."

"Yeah, I'm in town."

"..."

"Ranger business."

"..."

"Eh, nothing you won't see on the news in a few day's time."

"..."

"Exactly what it sounds like I meant."

"..."

" _I'm_ difficult?"

"..."

"Uh-huh. I seem to remember someone being a little hesitant on our-"

"..."

"Oh, I will so go there."

"..."

"Ranger's Oath."

"..."

"Truce? Hmm... Sure. Just this once."

"..."

"No, no, I'm not busy tonight. When's a good time for you?"

"..."

"Are you kidding? I am the living definition of _always at the ready._ "

"..."

"Alright. See ya then, Tammy. Wear something... nice."

I hung up and handed the holocaster back to the paralysed Trainer.

"Learn something?" I asked him with a lecherous grin. He snapped out of his scandalized stun and snatched the Holocaster out of my palm.

"We don't need monster-killers like you anymore." He spat at me. I laughed. That was the funniest, most ignorant declaration that I had ever heard in my entire life.

"Right, let me radio Command and tell them that we can all stop trying to kill ourselves for your sake, and then we Rangers can all go on a fucking vacation. Maybe we'll resume active duty once Pewter has been overrun by the Beedrill. If you're still alive when we come back, I'm going to make you sing the Ranger's anthem buttnaked while doing a handstand on the Gym stairs. During peak hours." I stopped laughing abruptly.

"Dipshit civilian." I grunted as I shouldered past him, with Vauban right on my heels.

"Kid." The black eyed youth jumped.

"I'm hungry, pissed, tired, and dirty. I have a date with the finest piece of commissioned ass this side of Kanto in under two hours. Show me where I can find a decent hotel. Then you're taking me and my sweet little Vauban to a greasy diner, so that I can get my squad situated." It wasn't a request, and the kid knew it. Despite this, he was on his toes at a silent stiff stance in a second.

Like I said, I think he was starting to like me.

...

"So kid?" I shot his way after placing my order with the front counter. Fuck if I was going to wait for a fucking waitress to find time for me. I was patronizing the fucking establishment, I got to say when they could take my fucking order.

"So Ranger?"

I smirked. The little bastard was finally lightening up.

"Why didja become a Trainer?" I asked, settling back. Vauban jumped into my lap. I should have kicked her ass for it, but I was feeling just as guilty as her. Calmly stroking Vauban's head, I caved into the sentiments that I knew I shouldn't. The kid looked nervous. Well, awkward. Okay, both.

"I -um… I-"

"Spit it the fuck out." A Ranger to the core.

"I don't know?" The kid shrank into the booth.

"You. Don't. Know. Well, fuck me. That's the best damn reason I've ever heard cross the lips of rookie Trainer." I used a genuinely impressed inflection when I spoke those words, completely throwing the kid off.

"Really?" The dumbass asked me, one unmarred eye of butter and a voice of liquid hope.

"No."

Crushed. Damn. That was easy. All it took was one syllable.

"I guess… I guess I became a Trainer because everyone else was..." The kid mumbled. I couldn't stifle that sigh.

"Everybody your age, you mean." I grumbled from my end.

"Well… yeah." The kid whispered. I rubbed my eyes. It was always the same shit.

"Why, oh why… Do kids always insist on getting killed..." It wasn't a question. Questions have answers. This didn't.

"You're not much older than me."

The first faint trace of a spine revealed itself in the kid's voice. I stopped rubbing my eyes.

"Tell me. When was the last time you saw a friend die?" I asked. The kid locked up.

"The answer for you, is never. I buried four of my friends and one bitch only three months ago. After a tactic of mine failed." I adjusted my beret. The kid had turned white.

"You look at me, and you see age? Is that all you see?" I asked, forcing him to meet my eyes by their magnetic severity alone. The kid swallowed. It was a full minute before he answered.

"No…"

I took a deep breath. Vauban was still, looking up at me with concern. She's such an empathetic little cunt, and I really wish that she was wasn't.

Dinner arrived. I'd ordered the kid a meal too. He seemed a little surprised at the amount of food on my plate.

"I thought you had a date?" The kid asked. I snorted. Kids. They're so naive.

"Yes, I have a date." I said, tucking into a chilidog. The kid looked anxious.

"But don't you want to eat with your-" I didn't let him finish. My snort was so damn loud that the other patrons thought I was choking.

"What part of 'date' don't you understand?" I chuckled as the kid looked at me, completely perplexed. People were still staring at me.

"Okay. I'll simplify it for you. I'm going to be eating with my date, but not necessarily swallowing. She can swallow if she wants, but I don't do the long meat." I explained to the kid. Eyes from other booths turned my way. The kid still didn't understand.

"Wha-"

"I'm going to be fucking her pussy so Goddamn hard that the bitch'll be limping for a month." I told the kid, in full sight of all the scathing glares from the other patrons. Fuck you guys. The kid was gonna learn about it sooner or later. His teacher might as well be a Ranger. The reaction I got out the kid was amusing, to say the least. He turned bright fucking red, and got this wily look in his eye. As if he knew exactly what I was talking about, couldn't believe that I'd said it, and wanted to know more.

Kids. They're not all bad.

"Vauban." The Bulbasaur looked up from my lap.

"Chilidog?" I offered her one of my own. Vauban sniffed it curiously, then made a face. Snorting, she sidled away from my offering. That wasn't a very Ranger like attitude towards food. We ate everything and anything, regurgitation be damned.

"Sucks to be you. Guess all you get is fertilizer tonight." I growled. Vauban did look wounded at that one. I wasn't about to let Vauban get picky, not for one damn second. She was going to have to learn the hard way. An empty stomach would conquer any squeamish tendencies.

"Cortez, report." I lifted a pokeball from my belt, and released my hunter-killer. Cortez formed in a burst of white light. My battle hardened Growlithe.

"Chilidog?" I offered Cortez a loaf of processed meat and canned chili, caked in enough cheese to halt a Munchlax's bowel movements for a week. Cortez never hesitated. He didn't even inspect it. His Commanding Officer had offered him a meal, and he wasn't about to turn it down. Wolfing the chilidog down at a speed that would have seemed harmful, Cortez partook of his evening meal.

"Thataboy." My voice was stern. I looked down at Vauban with disdain. She withered underneath my eyes.

"A Growlithe?" The kid leaned over the table to get a good look at Cortez. His jaw dropped instantly.

He was looking at Cortez's right side. Which is pretty much a giant fucking scar. Cortez got into a tussle with a Grimer back when he served in the Military. The fucking poison-type screwed Cortez up but good.

"He ain't the prettiest, but he's a damn good hound. You wouldn't believe it, but that fucking skin job right there is exactly that. A skin job. Cortez can't grow fur back over it, but it doesn't hurt him, or hinder him in any way." I told the kid, who was looking ill. I heard another patron mock gagging across the room. That got me out my seat.

"Yeah, I'd like to see what you'd look like after kissing a fucking Grimer for eight hours straight. Actually… I'd love to see it." I barked dangerously across the diner to the giggling patron. That shit wasn't right. Those wounds deserved respect. You don't ever poke fun at a veteran's wartime injuries.

Cortez took it all in stride. He was a quiet Growlithe. Almost unnervingly so. There was something old about Cortez. He may have still been a pup at three years in age, but I'm telling you…

There's something fucking old about my dog.

"Cortez." I grumbled his name. The pooch looked up at me, expecting an order.

"Milkshake?" I asked, offering him my lonely malt.

…

"...So Ranger?" The kid asked. Dinner was done. I'd just paid my tab, and left a huge tip for the waitress. She deserved it for having to put up with me. I was running out of time. I had to go get ready for my 'date.' But the kid had asked a question, and judging from his tone, it was a deep one.

"Yes?" I asked, gracing him with my full attention.

"What happened?" The kid asked quietly. Shit. It was my turn to freeze up.

Kids. I fucking hate them.

I was silent for a damn long time. I couldn't pull myself out of that hole without some serious effort. I saw their faces again. I heard their screaming.

 _I felt that roar._

"Ranger?" The kid snapped me out it. He sounded concerned. The kid was looking me in the eyes. I don't know, nor do I want to know what he saw in them. But it was enough to make the kid's eyes start watering.

"An accident." I whispered, voice hoarse. No. It wasn't a fucking accident. It was a fucking pokemon.

…

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 **PKMN-T.A.R.E:** Short for PKMN **T** rainer **A** pplication & **R** egistration **E** xamination. Entry level test administered to all Pokemon Trainer applicants for validating basic knowledge regarding League Law, Species Recognition, Situation Awareness, and Wilderness Survival. A minimal score of 80% is required for a Trainer's Licence.


	3. Chapter II: Icarus Ascending

**.**

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 **The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero**

 _Written by,_

 **Vile M.F. Slanders**

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" _ **...Tu Ne Cede Malis Sed Contra Audentior Ito… (...Yield not to misfortunes, but advance all the more boldly against them…)"**_ _-The Epitaph, always remembered; Ranger's Oath, Closing Line_

 **-v-**

 **Chapter II: Icarus Ascending**

"You've lost it, Bastard."

"I haven't lost shit."

"Really? Get up and walk then."

"..."

"Can't do it, can you?"

"You shut that fucking mouth of yours. Just you watch. If I could learn how to walk as a child, then I can learn how to walk as a man."

"-..."

"Why do you push yourself that hard? There's no shame in accepting the reality-"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

"...You just won't quit, will you?"

"Not until I'm dead. And I won't die until I'm wearing that fucking Beret…"

"You mean this?"

"..."

"Why do want a Black Beret so badly, Bastard?"

"..."

"Are you going to answer the question, Bastard?"

"...Why did you want one, Captain?"

"I didn't. It was awarded to me, when a former Blackhat ended up KIA. I was the best candidate in the Corps, and High Command put this Black Beret on my head, whether I wanted it there or not."

"..."

"So why do you want one?"

"Because I do."

"That is not the answer I want to hear, Bastard."

"Maybe you haven't figured this out about me yet, but I don't exactly tell people what they want to hear."

"Yes, I've read your file. And after reading it, I can tell just what kind of human being you are."

"And what kind of human being is that, Captain Lewis?"

"You're a fucking egotistical, self-serving, self-righteous, ambitious, and cold-blooded psychopath."

"You read my file right then."

"You just won't accept 'no' for an answer, will you Bastard?"

"I am still a Ranger-"

"No. You're a cripple. You were once a Ranger. You're a liability now."

"Watch me prove you wrong-"

"Really? So… Say that you can put your own weight on those legs again. Say that you can somehow run five klicks straight again, without passing out from oxygen deprivation. It's not going to change the fact, Bastard."

"Watch. Me."

"You didn't hear a Goddamn thing I just said, did you?"

"No, I heard it. I just know that you are wrong."

"The fact is, Bastard… You are emotionally compromised."

"...-"

"Just. Watch. Me."

"I heard a little bird mention something about you. Something your friends in the Vets tried to cover up."

"...I'm sure that whatever it was, it came a credible source-"

"It came from Colonel Isaac Howes."

"..."

"You see, the Colonel said something about a group of Vets finding your broken-down crippled ass outside of the Tank, hands and face pressed up against the glass, with that huge fucking Magikarp of yours on the otherside. Something about you bawling your eyes out to a Goddamn fish."

"..."

"You think that you're the only Ranger to have lost-"

"-Just shut up… -Please, just shut up…"

"You're not alone, Bastard. A lot of Rangers are in the exact same situation you are. The only difference between you and them... Is that you don't know when to quit."

"...How many have you buried?"

"..."

"That many, huh?"

"...More than the entire count of personnel stationed at this Outpost, Bastard…"

"So how do you deal with it?"

"I do."

"That is not an answer."

"And nothing you've given me resembles an answer either, Bastard."

"..."

"You're lost, Bastard. The Colonel signed the medical discharge this morning-"

"-No he didn't. Colonel Howes knows me. He knows that I'm gonna walk again-"

"It's not about you walking again, Bastard. It has everything to do with your state of mind. You're fucking lost, and you won't accept it."

"You don't fucking get it… The Corps is the only thing I have… It's the only fucking thing that I have left…"

"You still have a family, Bastard-"

"-If you fucking knew my father… You would know better than to say that..."

"...-"

"So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to prove you all wrong. I'm not settling for an honorable discharge. I'm getting my Black Beret."

"You don't have what it takes, Bastard."

"Watch me walk again."

"It's your fucking head, Bastard. Not your legs. You don't have the spine for it. I know you don't. The shit you pulled for your fucking dog and your fucking lizard proves it. You might not be half as fucked as you are now, if you would've just let them die."

"..."

"You're soft, Bastard. You would die for your own mon. What kind of fucking Ranger would kill themselves for a fucking monster?"

"Get Vauban in here. Now."

"What for?"

"You get me my little girl. You put a gun in my hand. You give me the order. And I will prove you wrong."

"Really? You would actually shoot _your little girl_ for a Black Beret that your crippled ass will never get?"

"Look me in my eye and tell me what you see."

"..."

"What do you see, Captain Lewis?"

"...I see an imbecile with a damn good poker face."

"..."

"...So you are still intent on being a Ranger?"

"..."

"Bastard?"

"...-"

"...You know… I remember seeing you in Cerulean. Way back when. You and the rest of Team Seven. You actually looked pretty damn sexy back then, Captain Lewis. Now you look like a granny. I was five years old. I saw the Black Berets… And I saw who I wanted to be..."

"...We don't always get what we want, Bastard."

"That may be, but I'm dedicating myself to getting it, regardless of it all."

"...You're fucking lost…"

"You bet your fucking ass I'm lost, Captain. And you bet your fucking ass that I'm gonna find my way back to where I was."

"…-"

"...You better start walking soon, Bastard."

"...?-"

"...Why are you suddenly rooting for me, Captain Lewis?"

"Because you passed. The Colonel didn't write your discharge this morning, Bastard. He sent it to High Command a month ago. I put the discharge on delay until I had a chance to assess the Fucking Bastard for myself."

"..."

"We have an outfit for you. Coming straight from High Command. Completely new field for the Rangers."

"...What kind of outfit?"

"Listening, are we? Good. Dry your fucking eye, Ranger. There's no place for those tears where you're going."

"You still haven't told me what I'm doing."

"Well, well. Look at the Bastard now. All high and mighty. Hmph... To think that your ugly fucking face is going to be seen all over the Kanto-Johto regions. Hell, maybe the whole world."

"Just what are you getting at, Captain?"

"...You learn to walk again. We give you Cortez, Vauban, and Darwin. We put your ass in a uniform, Badge, and Beret. We grant you an expense account. We rewrite the League Legislation-"

"-Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back it the fuck up. What the hell does the League have to do with the Rangers?"

"I told you that it was new territory for the Rangers, didn't I?"

"What. Does. In-di-go-League. Have. To do. With me?"

"You're going to be a Trainer-"

"-Fuck no."

"You didn't let me finish. You're going to be the first official League certified Ranger. You are going to be representing the Ranger Corps in both the public and the Trainer communities-"

"-No, no, no, I do see where this is going. I'm gonna be a fucking recruiter, aren't I?"

"Something like that."

"That is not going to get me my Black Beret."

"Being a recruiter? Hell no. But becoming the Indigo League Champion might."

"...!?-"

"...What?"

"You are representing the finest outfit in the world, Zane. The Rangers. The finest outfit deserves the finest seat. We want your ass on Lance's throne."

"Lance? The fucking Dragon King? Are the Blackhats going to give me their own mon to use for kicking his ass?"

"Nothing we have can take down Lance, Bastard. He's not the fucking League Champion for nothing. You are going to have to start from scratch, and raise a squad of mon that can take out the Dragon King. And you are going to have to deal with the press too. Nothing those bloodsuckers like more than a tale of tragedy and triumph."

"I'm out."

"I'm not joking, Ranger. So don't you joke with me."

"...How the hell am I going to kick Lance's ass off of his throne? He's maintained the position of Champion for almost twenty years-"

"-Which is exactly why the Rangers think- That it's time to show the world that a Bastard can overthrow a King."

"...-"

"...The Bastard King… The sound of that almost beats Fucking Bastard… Almost."

"So are you in? Or are you out?"

"...Will I still get to serve as a Ranger? Or am I going to be a political puppet for High Command? -And most importantly… Will this earn me my Black Beret? Tell me now. No bullshit."

"Yes to all three. You will not wear a Ranger's uniform and _not_ serve in the Ranger Corps. High Command _will be_ influencing your influence. And as a Blackhat myself, I can honestly state… that it would be an honor to serve alongside _The Bastard King_."

"...-"

" _...I'm in._ "

...

 _ **Viridian Ranger's Prime Outpost: Three months, two weeks, three days before Ranger Zane Bastard's promotion to Chief Warrant Officer.**_

The morning horn sounded. I cracked open my eyes. With a heavy sigh, I started kneading my temples.

"Abstain, Darwin." I ordered. My giant fucking Magikarp went dead stiff in the water. Anyone who's ever trained a Magikarp knows just how much work it takes to get the perpetually panic-attacking fish to stay fucking still for just five fucking seconds. Most Magikarp Trainers know better than to waste the necessary months required for conditioning a Magikarp out of that instinctive behavior, because those Trainers know that they'll get to see all that work go back to fuck-nothing the very next day.

I could get Darwin to indefinitely stop flopping around by my command alone. Every Goddamn time.

Beat that.

"We'll resume training tomorrow morning. Rest your fat ass up. You're gonna learn how to use that bulk for hostile applications even if it kills you. Dismissed." I transferred Darwin to his pokeball, and made my way out of the Aquatic Training Facility. As I left the Aquatic Range, I released Darwin from his pokeball and into the Tank for some R&R.

He'd earned it.

I rubbed my bruised eye sockets and groaned. We'd been at it for fifteen hours straight. Darwin had put forth his best effort in trying to satisfy his Commanding Officer's outrageous combat expectations, but the fat fucker was just a Magikarp.

Which is synonymous with "fucking useless."

Darwin was something of an Outpost joke. He was the only Magikarp that had ever served in the Viridian Forest Detachment. I hadn't exactly been subtle with my ambitions. Everybody at the Outpost knew that I was gunning for a Black Beret. Everybody knew that I wanted a fucking Gyarados. Everybody knew that established procedure wasn't good enough for Warrant Officer Zane Bastard. _Everybody knew_ that Warrant Officer Zane Bastard wasn't going to settle for a G.I. Gyarados if he actually managed to succeed in his impossible venture of obtaining a Black Beret.

Warrant Officer Zane Bastard was going to get his Gyarados the hard way. Starting with a Magikarp.

It was probably the single vainest and most asinine endeavor that I had ever undertaken. There is a reason why the Gyaradosia are as rare as Pre-Brink pornos.

You. Just. Can't. Fucking. Train. A Magikarp.

At least not for combat. I'd actually managed the impossible. I found a role for a Magikarp in the Ranger Corps. I have successfully trained Darwin for Subaquatic Location and Retrieval, in spite of my own Colonel pulling me aside one day to inform me that I was wasting my time.

Now when he mentions Darwin, the Colonel refers to that Magikarp with all the respect due a Ranger.

But that's all moot. I want a Gyarados. And I want that Black Beret. My fellow Greenbacks are quick to point out that even if I get Darwin to evolve, it's not going to get me my Black Beret.

Of course it's not. But it's gonna raise eyebrows all across Command. As far as I'm concerned, Darwin is just another dark thread I'm weaving into that Black Beret.

Of course, when Darwin does evolves, and that is a 'when,' I'm gonna have to prepare for the worst like no other.

In the few recorded cases of Trainers evolving their Magikarps into Gyaradosia, more than half of those accounts end with the fledgling Dragon-Snakes eating their own fucking Trainers.

It didn't matter if you coddled and pampered your Magikarp for its entire life, or beat it into submission before it evolved.

That Gyarados was going to try and kill you, and you had to break the beast all over again. Only now, it wasn't a flippantly useless Magikarp. Now it was an armored-plated, pissed-off, fuck-ugly Sea Serpent bigger than a Goddamn house, and packing an arsenal of Shit-Your-Pants so robust that it would have made the Pre-Brink armories look petite by comparison.

Not to mention the attitude. Gyarados behavior only comes in one flavor: Fucking violent as hell. Gyaradosia are one of only eight species of pokemon designated under the "Disaster" classification index. Gyaradosia are so fucking powerful and ruthless that they can actually change the shape of a continent using only pissed-off facial expressions and a loud motherfucking roar.

You thought that I wanted a Gyarados for riding in parades? Reread the above line.

-That's _why_ I want a fucking Gyarados.

Darwin is my shining star. My flawless protege. I couldn't possibly have obtained a better specimen. When Darwin fucking evolves, he's gonna be the biggest fucking Gyarados this world has ever seen. You think I'm blowing smoke up your ass? Listen to the numbers roll, baby.

You see, there's a reason for why I christened my Magikarp after the father of evolution. The average size for a healthy Magikarp Darwin's age is roughly 3'8" in length, and 58.3lbs.

Darwin is 8'9" in length, and 427.5lbs.

You can all start sucking my equally formidable dick right now. The line starts at my well-endowed tip.

That's unprecedented size for a Magikarp. And size carries over into the evolution, Gyarados. We're talking one, Big. Scary. Angry. Mother-fucking-Gyarados. I'm saying the Military's "Destroyer" Class Wailord size applies. On a fucking _Gyarados._

I'm gonna have my hands _fucking full_ rearing that monster into a Ranger.

...

So what's this fish's backstory? Where the fuck did this freak come from, and how the hell did a fucking bloodthirsty and ambitious Ranger get his hands on the closest thing humanity has seen to a cooking nuke in fifteen-hundred years? I'll tell you.

...But it's gonna cost you 2 Sandz.

Darwin is unique amongst all Magikarps. I've had eggheads such as the likes of Professor Oak and Professor Elm personally requesting my Darwin's involvement in their "groundbreaking" research. Wooho. Whatever. But regardless of my opinions regarding the use of the word "groundbreaking," the Labs actually pay me a stipend just to train Darwin. All because they want to see just how fucking scary that Gyarados is gonna be. Darwin's so fucking big that I could sell him to Chimera Industries' Waterloo Division for a small fortune.

And I still wouldn't get my money back. And I never will.

I didn't catch Darwin. I bought his ass off of some playboy angler who was actually going to stuff and mount the biggest fucking latent monster the world had ever seen.

Like I was gonna let that fucking happen.

Darwin has history in the Viridian sector. Or more accurately, Darwin _is_ Viridian history. There's a small reservoir above Viridian's old hydroelectric dam. A favorite fishing spot for local anglers. A good place for a weekend picnic. Quiet, quaint, and safe. And this murky pool of water was home to a legend.

Ol' Crasher.

That's what they called Darwin before I wrote his dispatch and put a G.I. barcode tattoo on his tongue.

Anglers had been trying and failing to land that giant red fish for fifty fucking years. Ol' Crasher snapped every line that ever snagged him. People knew that he was down there, ripping rods right out of fisherman's hands like it was a dirty habit. And just like every fucking Magikarp that ever made it past fry, Ol' Crasher liked to make his presence known in the weirdest fucking natural phenomenon science has ever encountered.

Ol' Crasher could jump. And he could jump higher than any other Magikarp in that pool.

Nobody knows why they do it. Breaching, that is. But Magikarps just can't go one fucking day in their shitty lives without jumping out of the fucking water for no apparent reason whatsofuckingever.

They just do it. It doesn't make any sense. Not when there's a sky loaded with Pidgeotto and Fearows looking for any signs of an easy meal.

And meals don't come much easier than Magikarps.

The closest thing a Magikarp has to a natural defense mechanism is _dying_. I'm not shitting you. Magikarps have absolutely nothing going for them as far as fight or flight instincts are concerned. Magikarps only thrive because they can live quite comfortably in irradiated water, they can eat raw sewage like it's fucking candy, and they can multiply in the billions.

And because of those three exceptionally effective passive traits, the Magikarps can blissfully kill themselves breaching every fucking day, and their numbers will never plummet for it.

But Ol' Crasher? No bird in sky was big enough to pluck his ass outta the water. He's fucking lucky that the Braviary don't migrate over Kanto, otherwise he would never have lasted long enough to make a legend. A fucking loud one.

Yep, "Crashing." That's why they called him Ol' Crasher. When he fucking breached, the bastards in Pallet Town raised their umbrellas. Anyone within a two klick radius of that reservoir would be rendered temporarily deaf for several hours.

And anyone on the shoreline? They got treated to a natural wave pool. Hope you were wearing a life vest.

'Cause you were gonna fucking need it.

Despite his status as a fucking abomination, Ol' Crasher stayed off the national angler radar, chiefly because the people of Viridian found him first, and they kept quiet about it.

If any angler was going to land Ol' Crasher's ass, they were gonna be a native born Viridian.

Unfortunately for the Viridians, it didn't work. The guy who wrangled Ol' Crasher onto dry land was a tourist from Johto's Goldenrod City. And he used basic fucking tackle and kit to do it too.

If I was him, I'd be feeling like a Goddamn King from that moment on, all the way to the day I died.

Especially after what I paid him for that fucking fish.

It made fucking waves when Ol' Crasher got himself beached. Local news agencies, Trainers, Anglers, and even Oak Laboratory personnel were deployed to the reservoir en masse. And of course, yours truly. Ranger Zane Bastard, representing the Monster-Killing High Class.

I'd never seen a mon that fucking big in the flesh before. I honestly thought that somebody had put a Magikarp costume on a Munchlax as a joke. Ol' Crasher was so fucking huge, that he made his shitty little reservoir look like a Goddamn puddle. He had eyes the size of fucking dinner plates. I could have stuck my head into his pupils, they were that fucking big.

And do you know what I saw when I looked into those eyes?

One.

Big.

Mother.

Fucking.

 _Gyarados._

I saw a fish who was so damn big, that if I got him to evolve, he'd make me a meal ticket for my Black Beret.

And this fucking angler was talking taxidermy with the country yokels.

I could've killed the sumbitch. Would've been cheaper if I had.

I wasn't the only one interested in acquiring Ol' Crasher. A Researcher from Oak Labs was snivelling up a fucking storm. He wanted that Magikarp alive for research intended purposes.

I thought that the Researcher was outta his Goddamn mind.

I mean, look at him.

Just look at him...

-The Gyarados from hell.

It was so beautiful, it brought tears to my eyes.

Nope. Fuck scientific progress. That fucking Magikarp was gonna be killing mon like a Goddamn natural disaster. Or I'd be throwing my beret into the reservoir, and eating my Ranger's badge without the sauce.

I walked right up to that angler and offered him something more substantial than the Researcher's lecture on "moral commitments" and "scientific contributions."

I opened the starting bid at two-thousand Sandz.

Yeah, I know you just shat your pants. You could pay for a year's tuition at Saffron's University of Applied Pokedynamics with that much Sandz. And I was offering it for a Magikarp.

A fucking. _Magikarp._

Want some advice? Don't change those shorts yet. The Researcher was about to get down and dirty.

2,500? I can beat that.

3,000.

3,125? You petering out already? What a bitch.

4,000. I ain't fooling around.

4,250? Fuck this shit.

7,800 Sandz. Cold hard cash. Right here. Right now. No waiting. No wiring. No official documents to sign. No phone calls to the bank. Consider it tax exempt. Your next three months of vacation funded entirely by the Ranger Corps, replete with a harem of top shelf whores and a first-class room on your Trans-Hoenn cruise.

And that's how I bought the biggest fucking mistake of my life. I threw everything I had on the table for a fucking Magikarp. Everybody present at the reservoir backed the _fuck up_ , they were that afraid of catching my strain of crazy. The Researcher rushed off to try and scrounge up an excuse that could warrant matching my bid with his boss.

Nope. His boss wasn't crazy.

Ol' Crasher, sold to the handsome, newly destitute Ranger in the red beret -sporting the fucking brain illness. For. Seven. Thousand. Eight. Hundred. Mother. Fucking. Sandz.

Thank God my meals and bunk are provided as part of the G.I. Bill.

So did it pay off? We'll find out. That all depends on whether or not Darwin kills my ass when he evolves.

...Now where's my 2 Sandz?

...

I walked into the barracks. My fellow Greenbacks were still rubbing their fucking eyes. The morning horn's call was all of a minute old and these fucking Walkouts were still trying to kick the sleep.

I changed my uniform, and adjusted my beret in a mirror, and then I walked out into the fucking field while they were still bitching about the time.

My Senior Officers thought that I was gonna kill myself pushing as hard as I was, but I'll be damned if I ever gave them a reason to send me to the infirmary. You can't put a Ranger in the fucking sick bay just for having tar-black circles around the eyes. And I reminded them of that every time they asked.

You see, I'd already completed Spec. Ops training by the time my "class" came back from leave. I'd been running S-ranked Operations with the fucking Ranger Vets while the Walkouts lived the high life like civilian soldiers.

I didn't envy them for a fucking second. I was in the Corps deep. When my "class" got back from leave, they didn't recognize the hardcore gung-ho motherfucker wearing Zane Bastard's badge. I'd seen shit in my four months as a Special Operative that these puss-fucks couldn't even comprehend if you brainwashed them using every fucking B-horror movie as a medium.

I was the "Fucking Bastard," and I didn't even have to prove it.

And unfortunately… When my "class" came back, I was conscripted into their numbers.

It was a fucking slap on my dick, and I did not approve.

I was still just a Warrant Officer. A Petty Warrant Officer. And no amount of volunteering for suicide missions was going to offset the amount of time I had to put in before I could make Chief Warrant Officer.

I was treated like a Goddamn child after having lived like a savage beast for four fucking months.

I was fucking pissed with Command.

Fortunately, even though I'd lost the privilege of running the S-ranks with the Vets, I still had my Vauban; who had gone through the same shitfest picnic that I had as a Special Operative.

Only thing is, Vauban didn't really care that we'd been assigned to pussy detail.

The fucking dinosaur could get her beauty sleep now, without having to worry about getting killed by a fucking Nidorino in his rut.

I could almost sympathize.

…

"Rise and shine, Vauban." I kicked the grimy trough, rudely waking my little girl from her late morning in. She reluctantly rose from her nest in the mud, yawning as she did so.

"Come on, Vauban. Get the shit out and let's get to the fucking mess hall." I grumbled. Vauban groaned, and started dragging her feet. Vauban was taking too long in her early morning stretches, reminding me fiercely of all those fucking Walkouts still pissin' and moaning in the barracks.

No way was I letting my Vauban soften up.

I dumped the trough over with her still in it, and then I kicked the shit out of my little girl.

"Where's your fucking edge, Vauban?" I growled after I was done taking my fury out on my first mon. She looked up at me from the dirt like she was gonna start crying.

Come on, girl. Don't do this. Don't do this to me.

Don't make me really have to hurt you.

"I've been up for thirty six hours straight, grinding my fucking ass off. Fifteen of those fucking hours were spent trying to train a retarded Magikarp how to park his fat ass on a Goddamn walnut from a six meter drop. At this rate, Vauban, I'm gonna start taking Darwin with me out on patrol. At least he makes a fucking effort." I was shaking at the gills. Vauban smartened up at once, those tears were long gone.

"Walk those bruises off, Vauban. On the fucking double." I gave her another kick in the ass, but it was a light one. Nothing more than reinforcement.

Vauban and I finished our mess and proceeded to the Board. The Vets were all out hitting the S-ranks, so there was only Walkouts in the dining hall. I got out of that chattering room as soon as I fucking could. I could barely stand all the noise. Only a week ago, that hall was as quiet as a church during mess time. Back when it was just the Vets, before the fucking Walkouts came back. Vets didn't say shit unless shit needed to be said. They made the fucking mess hall feel sacred with the silent gravity of their sublime commitment to fucking excellence.

And these fucking Walkouts were desecrating my mess hall with their mindless fucking prattling. It made me sick to my core.

I was dreading to view the fucking Board. The fucking Walkouts had come back a week before rotation. Meaning that I got one week on Firewatch with a fucking Walkout before they shifted units around again, and the next Walkout I got stuck with would be for a full fucking term. So much for orientation. I blame Command for shitty timing. For that first week, I got stuck with a snickering seventeen-year old beaner by the name of Corporal Carlos Garcia. He wasn't so bad for a Walkout. He actually knew what a salute was. We didn't talk much, which was something that I appreciated, but from what was said; I got the distinct impression that Carlos had spent the entirety of his leave doing absolutely nothing but getting hammered and getting fucking laid.

I could respect that.

Now Carlos and I were soon to be parted, and the next sorry sucker who tried to call me "partner" was going to end up with a fat lip.

But when I got to the Board, and perused that fucking list for my name and designated Walkout, I quickly discarded the notion of punching my "partner" in the mouth.

"I'm gonna slit your fucking throat..."

Oh.

"God-"

Hell.

"Fucking-"

No.

"DAMNIT!" Vauban wisely chose to hide her ass, _fucking fast_.

My fists were hammering on that list like I was a Primeape in heat without a banana in sight to whack myself off with. I was properly fucking pissed.

"Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck!"

 _-Fuck_.

"FUCK!" One big ol' duke cracked the Board's wooden frame.

"Bastard? Is that you?" I recognized that nasally voice.

"YOU SPENT A FUCKING WEEK WITH ME IN FUCKING FIREWATCH, AND YOU HAVEN'T FUCKING FIGURE OUT MY FUCKING PENCHANT FOR THE FUCKING WORD, 'FUCK' YET?!"

Hi Carlos.

"No."

You smirking fuck. I almost like you.

"God… Fucking… Damnit. I just sharpened my knife too. Now I'm gonna have to throw it away after I slit her fucking throat…" I was salivating on the fucking rage high.

"Let me guess..."

Don't fucking say it.

"Carlos…" I growled a warning, but that gurning shit wasn't going to shut up.

"-Warrant Officer Amber Hail. Congradufuckyoulations, Bastard. I will salute your corpse in the finest fashion when they hang your ass for murder." Carlos pointed her fucking name out on the list, like I didn't already know that it was next to mine.

"Thanks, Carlos. Can I get your service tag number, so that I can recommend it for my jury?" The subtle menace in my voice killed Carlos's smile fucking stone cold dead. I turned to Carlos with my 'livid as fuck' face on. He respectfully backed the fuck up.

Yep. I'm the Fucking Bastard, bitch.

…

Warrant. Officer. Amber. Hail. This is the point where I should start flinging obscenities like a Mankey OD'ing on laxatives.

Problem is, they haven't invented a explicative that adequately describes that piece of shit, worthless, psychotic fucking piece of shit, fucking-

...She's a bitch, Okay?

And a cunt.

And-

…And fuck it! She's the nastiest little whiny zit that ever decided to be a human being!

Only she's not a fucking human, she's-

-Ow...

-I think I just had an aneurysm…

...Nope. False alarm. An aneurysm would've given me a headache.

And nothing else.

Amber was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-whodafuckcares-years old. Redhead. Anorexic. Probably because of drugs-

...Oh my God, my temples are gonna rupture.

Amber was psychotic. And not in the good fun pinch-and-squeal kind of way.

Obviously, or I would have fucked her by now.

Eesh…

Scratch that last remark. I do not want to think about that ginger scarecrow naked.

Okay, third time's the charm…

Amber was a Ranger. And there was no riper candidate to serve as the posterchild to everything that wasn't a Ranger than fucking Amber Hail. It took Amber sixteen years to make Warrant Officer, and the only reason that Amber got it was because of seniority and because Command just wanted to shut her bitchy mouth up.

It didn't work.

Amber spent every day narking on her fellow Rangers for the least little shit. That Career-Walkout was so fucking useless, that the only way that Amber felt she could make herself appear useful; was to point out everyone else's flaws. You know the type. Insecurity and shitty attitudes dictate those cunts' very existence.

I do not know why Command did not simply dishonorably discharge Amber from the Ranger Corps for being a useless tattling bitch. Amber was such a fucking nark that she drove the Colonel nuts. And when the Colonel told Amber to buck the fuck up…

That stupid fucking Warrant Officer Walkout went straight to High Command with the Colonel's recommendation.

She fucked herself up but good. You do not go over your Colonel. Especially not Colonel Isaac Howes. One of the most decorated non-Blackhat Officers in the Corps, and one of the most respectable human beings that I have ever met.

After High Command was done laughing their asses off at Amber's plea for intervention, the Colonel closed the fucking filecabinet of complaints that Amber had filled with every grievance she had written in her entire career-

-And then the Colonel lit that filecabinet up using premium-aged single-malt scotch whisky and a fat expensive cigar-

-In his fucking office.

And then he had his fucking Blastoise put out the fire-

-By pissing on it.

The Colonel had turned Amber's ass over to the Corps and effectively told us-

"Open season."

"Fire at will."

Like I said, a respectable fucking man.

In her 'service' to the Corps, Amber had pissed off every gung-ho Veteran in the Viridian Outpost by ratting on them for having untied shoelaces. And they were sporting for some fucking vengeance.

Fucking Vets, man.

You think I'm bad?

Give me twenty more years in the Corps, and I can match the evil kind of fucking nasty that the Vets can pull off.

I'm amazed that the Vets didn't kill Amber with some of the shit they pulled. At the very least, Amber should have been a fucking paraplegic triple amputee. But those Vets knew what they were doing, and Amber lived through it all. Unfortunately...

But that shitbrained ginger Walkout was so fucking stupid that she couldn't figure it out and just back out of the fucking Corps.

She only had more shit to bitch about, and she was fucking oblivious to the fact the of the matter-

-That nobody fucking cared.

So how did this powerless spiteful bitch have such a fucking effect on me? Let me lay it out to you in numerical order.

One: She was in a Ranger uniform, and she had no fucking right to wear it.

Two: She was ugly as sin and acted as if her musk smelled like Milotic.

Three: She was a fucking disgrace to humanity.

Four: She picked me out.

Those insecure psychobitches always go for the fucking top class. Like a fucking Shinx snarling at an Arcanine's ankles, that fucking bitch singled me out.

It took Amber sixteen years to make Warrant Officer, and she did absolutely nothing to earn it.

I was a Warrant Officer at sixteen years of age, and I busted my ass for it.

But Amber didn't see it like that.

Nope.

Not one bit.

She wrangled my hive in the most spineless and irritating fashion that is only ever utilized by fucking sociopaths. Amber would start rolling a line of shit off her tongue as soon as I came into view, all of it covertly referring to me, before trucking it past my ass, ranting like a fucking psychopath.

"About how some people have everything handed to them on a silver platter."

Bitch.

Show me your Spec. Ops Bandanna. Right now.

What? You don't have one?

Wow.

Go get yours on a silver platter then. I fucking earned mine by starving, bleeding, scrapping, freezing, fearing, stinking, bleeding, crawling, biting, kicking, weeping, moaning, screaming, bleeding, damn near dying and fighting off one wicked case of pneumonia.

Don't you even fucking dare give me that "silver platter" shit, bitch.

I earned everything that I own.

Unlike you.

Amber was the flotsam of the human DNA sequence. Amber had so much chlorine in her fucking gene pool, your eyes would blister on sight of her. And her nasty, attitude rank, snide-ass voice would make your ears bleed. Speaking of that voice…

…

"You two done looking at the board yet? Some of us have work to do."

Amber, you never did an honest day's worth of work in your whole fucking life.

"I don't think that twerking it to a Sandshrew qualifies as work, Warrant Officer Hail."

My buttons were already jammed into the console.

And starting tonight, I was gonna be spending twelve hours a day, every fucking other day, with that fucking cuntsnatching bitch-

-For six whole months-

-On Firewatch Patrol.

If Amber wasn't dead by morning, I was applying for Canonization.

The Patron Saint of-

...Fuck it, I'd apply for Canonization after slitting her throat.

Zane Bastard of the Greenbacks: The Patron Saint of Making the World a Prettier Place-

-One Knife Stroke at a Time.

"What did you just say to me, Warrant Officer Bastard?" Amber was glaring up a fucking pussybeam right at the back of my neck. I could feel the spineless self-entitled rays bouncing off of my impenetrable good-looks.

"Corporal Garcia, you're my witness. Warrant Officer Hail just referred to me as a 'Bastard.' Now let's go write that grievance for the Colonel." I put on my slowest drawl, and made sure to whine every other syllable. Carlos was cracking up.

"Oh, you're so funny... Warrant Officer Bastard..." Amber acted as if I didn't just hand her ass to her with all the trimmings on the side. I fucking hate poor sportsmanship.

"No, _Carlos_ is funny. I just speak the Goddamn truth, whether you appreciate it or not, bitch."

 _Oh yeah._ I was escalating.

"I'm writing you up for that, Bastard. I was gonna let the Sandshrew comment go-"

"Why, because you didn't want your boyfriend getting wounded when you betrayed his ass?" I cut Amber off with a deadpan jab. Amber absolutely fucking hated me when I was deadpanning it. Probably because she couldn't tolerate that much, 'I don't give a fuck.'

"You're going to fucking hell, Bastard... And I'm going to be the one to send you there." Amber was alreading shaking, and I hadn't even gotten started.

"Hell? Oh-fuck-me. Hell for me is gonna be an expanse of naked Ambers, all spreading their spindly fucking anorexic legs. Please Amber. Don't send me to Hell. I don't want to know what you look like bare ass naked." Still fucking deadpan. Carlos was having a seizure, he was trying so damn hard not to laugh at a pissed-off Superior Officer.

"I'd never let you fucking touch me, you fucking pig." Amber spat that funny fucking line through chattering teeth. I almost lost my deadpan demeanor to a roar of laughter.

Really, Amber? You wanna go there?

Why didn't you just say so sooner?

To Note:

I have fucked the most slovenly of whores so dirty rotten that after I was done with them, the term "slovenly" needed to be replaced with "fucking nasty."

I've rammed my cyclopean whale up through a gasping Policewoman's thong, while I bent her over a parked motorcycle in the middle of a town square.

I once banged a Trainer who got covered from head-to-toe in Butterfree guts, after I disemboweled the winged fuck attacking her with my bare hands. That slime-encrusted Trainer was so grateful that I'd saved her ass, she let me use the backdoor.

I've porked one-eyed Vets more than twice my age in a literal foxhole. No shit. Man, those berets are fucking kinky. It ain't sexual misconduct if it ain't on the record.

And this anorexic cunt honestly thought that I wanted to screw her next?

Fuck.

No.

"I wouldn't stick my dick inside your craw even if I had Carlos dress it up all nice-and-tidy-like in an umbrella first, simply because I can't tolerate your crazy-stanky-funk." Amber shat her fucking drawers, she was so fucking scandalized.

I just tell it like it is.

"The Colonel is going to hear every word you just said, Bastard." Amber hissed when she could draw breath again.

Yeah, go right ahead.

Threaten me with that feeble shit.

"Good. I hope that the Colonel laughs just as hard as Carlos is when he hears it."

Carlos was gonna get himself killed with his shitty-ass laughter. And I was gonna be the one to string him up. You do not laugh through your fucking nose. That shit is annoying as fuck.

"Vauban, let's go. I can't stand the smell of Walkout. Especially not the scent of an Officer Walkout." I left the fucking Board and the red faced Walkouts behind. Vauban came out from under a bench, wide eyed and worried. That poor mon had faced off against a fucking Magmar before without balking, and here I had scared my little girl to death.

I'm so sorry, baby. I shouldn't have lost my head.

"Let's get to the clinic, Vauban. I want those bruises I gave you checked out. I want to make sure that there's nothing broken underneath them."

I slowed my march down, and with a jabbing finger, I indicated that my green shadow was to walk beside me. Vauban hesitantly took her spot at my calf, looking up at me with guilt pouring from her eyes.

No, Vauban it was all me. That was all on me.

You're fine just the way-

-Stop it. Now.

"Get behind me, Vauban. Monsters do not march beside their Commanding Officers." I growled fiercely, and my poor tortured girl fell into a shameful step behind me.

Good.

I didn't want her to see me fighting the tears.

...

I still took Vauban to the clinic despite my reservations. Most of the senior medical staff were out with the Vets on the S-ranks. We had more freaking S-rank missions than we had Rangers. Dangerous mon were always fucking something up, whether it was a Trainer, a Town, or just the fucking world. It all depended on the season.

Right now, it was the Nido fucking season. The Nidorino were starting their ruts, and the Nidokings were just getting out of theirs. We had pregnant Nidoqueens squirting out Nidorans in the thousands, and the Nidorina were next. Nidorina generally birthed anywhere from three to five Nidorans a season, and the Nidoqueens shat out sixteen to twenty-one. The Rangers were hustling to cull their numbers before they became a threat to the settlements again.

...

The Nidorans and Nidorinas were generally pretty skittish, so they were pretty easy to wipe out when found. The Nidorinos, Nidoqueens, and Nidokings? That was an entirely different matter.

The males, Nidoking and Nidorino, formed packs during the rut. They would gouge each other to death when they found a female Nidorina or Nidoqueen. The victor got the poon, and the losers got to bleed. Pretty fucking basic as far as nature goes.

The real Nido problem was the fucking Packs. They'd kill each other off without any hesitation whatsoever on sight of a female, but they'd attack as a group if any thing else got close to their territory. It didn't take long for a Pack of Nido to kill a human being who'd mistakenly wandered into their spawning grounds. And they didn't just hump the female members of their species either. They were so Goddamn horny that they'd fuck anything menstruating.

Including humans. We had cases every year involving Trainers who ignored our fucking warning signs and walked out into the Frontier, only to get raped to death by a Pack of fucking Nidokings. All because those stupid fucking Trainers went somewhere they shouldn't go on that special week of the month.

The Nidokings are the most dangerous indigenous species of mon in Viridian. They're extremely territorial, brutally strong and fast, and sticking with the Viridian motif; highly venomous. The Nidokings' size ranges anywhere from that of a man's, to that of Rhydon's. So we're talking a pretty fucking big mon. These scary fucks treated a Beedrill's pupae hive like an all-you-can-eat buffet, while the Beedrill couldn't do shit to them, thanks to the Nidokings inborn constitution regarding all things venom. The Nidokings are fairly rare; thanks to the fucking Rangers, I might add, but during the rut, the Nidokings come out in force.

One Nidoking is bad enough, but a twelve-member Pack?

You needed a Squad of Veteran Rangers to hunt down and kill that shit.

Which is why my Vets were fucking gone. I didn't know why the Colonel didn't send me with them. I was damn near a Vet myself, and we needed every available unit out in the field culling those sons-of-bitches back into endangerment. But instead, I was made to stroll along the established Routes on Firewatch, reminding Trainers not to wander off into the woods; because the big scary purple monsters out there were simply dying to fill them with holes, or just dying to fill a particular hole.

-With a venomous reproductive secretion that would enter your bloodstream and dissolve you from the arteries out, regardless of whether it was injected into the unnaturally bleeding hole, or the naturally bleeding hole.

That explanation usually kept people out of the fucking Viridian Forest all together, especially the girl kind of people, which is primarily why I fucking used it.

 _Rangers do not take kindly to sharing our women with the fucking mon._

I need to learn Latin, so that I can propose the above line for addition in the Ranger's Oath.

Because...

-Fucking inspiring, man.

…

Vauban was getting a check up from a Walkout medic named Lance Corporal Brenda Eckleson. Also known as the dumbest, sexiest broad in the whole fucking Outpost. While Brenda was checking Vauban's health out, I was checking Brenda's health out.

-And Brenda was looking even better now than she had when I'd last fucked her.

"So what were you up to on leave, Bren?" I will admit, Walkout or not, I wasn't going to talk down to those fine ass legs. You had to be a fucking Vet to be able to resist the allure Brenda's tasty thighs.

Or at least, not a seventeen year-old Warrant Officer, roaring fucking crazy with ego and hormones.

Brenda sent me a smile over Vauban's bulb, and I could feel my pants shrinking in the glow of those pristine white teeth.

"I got married!" Brenda flashed me a ring on her finger, and my life-threatening erection auto-dysfunctioned.

"Oh…"

Not what I was expecting. Brenda was somewhere around my age, younger than me I'd imagine. Most folk didn't tie down until they were settled, usually in their twenties at least. But Brenda had gotten noosed young, and as horny as I am, I still respect marriage.

 _Snort._

My only concern at this point... Was if _Brenda_ still respected marriage.

"What do you mean 'Oh?' Shouldn't you say congratulations?" Brenda was a dumb shit, but damn was she was _smoking_.

"No, I meant 'Oh' as in; 'Oh,' who am I gonna fuck now?"

Did I mention that I'm a Fucking Bastard?

"Oh…" Brenda lit up with surprise.

Score.

"Um… Bastard… You know what marriage means, right?"

Mayday.

"Not really, no. Do you?"

Come on, roll snake eyes…

"Actually… I do."

Fuck.

"Well that's fucked. Congratulations, Lance Corporal Eckleson. I envy your lucky man."

Only for the sex. I wouldn't want to be married to your stupidity.

"Well thank you, Bastard!" Enter Brenda's big ol' dopey smile.

Goddamn, I almost feel sick for sticking my dick inside of this dumb broad.

"You're… Welcome."

No you fucking aren't.

"Vauban, you've grown a whole twelve pounds since I last measured you! What is Bastard feeding you?" Brenda was giving Vauban the the child speech, and I couldn't quite abide that.

I'm the only one who can speak to Vauban using kiddy-talk.

"Virgins." I growled. I was baking under my uniform, beating the hormones and self disgust back; and getting furious fucking angry doing so. Brenda looked up at me with a startled expression.

"You like virgins, don't you Vauban?" I gave my mon the jester's grin. Vauban knew to play along.

 _Burb._ Said Vauban, happy.

"Good. You can eat the virgins. I can't stand the taste of them myself. I like my meals… _seasoned_."

Do you like my eyes twitching, Brenda?

Well, do you?

"Really, Bastard?"

You didn't even fucking notice, did you? You stupid fucking walking vagina-

"Really, Brenda..."

I give up. I'm too cynical to explain cynicism to you.

"Okay… Well, keep doing whatever you're doing with her, and Vauban will be an Ivysaur well before-"

"Warrant Officer Bastard?"

Some fucking Walkout looking for a piece of my mind just interrupted the most important, intelligent, and relevant thing to have come out of Brenda's mouth since my dick.

"Do you want something? _Private?_ " Do I even have to clarify to you what my tone and expression said to him? Oh, he was backing up now. Yeah, my reputation as a minor Veteran was not to be fucked with.

"P-private Peter Samuels, reporting sir. I- I have a dispatch for you." Sweating at the seams. Brand spanking new Walkout. First fucking year in the Rangers.

I can't wait to pick my teeth with your head.

"If it's another cock portrait from Carlos, so help me God…"

"No! It's from the Colonel!"

Whoa. Let me find my etiquette.

"The Colonel sent you with a message for me?"

"Yeah- A dispatch… Requesting your immediate audience in the Colonel's office."

"Oh…"

…

Colonel Isaac Howes. Where to begin?

How about this:

He was the closest thing I had to a father anymore.

I'm not saying that we had a creepy touchy-feely relationship. I just meant that whenever I acted in any way, I caught myself wondering:

"What would the Colonel think of this?"

Yeah, I wanted to please him. I've got no shame in admitting it. Primarily because the Colonel was a man worthy of my respect.

Patient? You wouldn't believe that he'd served in the Rangers for forty-six years.

Intelligent? You don't make Colonel by playing dumb and kissing ass.

Decisive? A little over twenty years ago, in a situation involving a Wheezing outbreak, the Colonel ordered a Squad of Rangers to commit suicide in order to save Viridian's clean water supply. He slept soundly that night.

Honorable? The Colonel raised the biggest fucking memorial to those Rangers, and he visits it once a fucking week to pour top-shelf whisky over their graves.

A Leader? The Colonel was the best kind. On slow paperwork weeks, that geriatric bastard was out there running S-Ranks with the Vets. I actually got to serve with Colonel Isaac Howes _twice_ in separate campaigns. Both he and his fucking Blastoise wrecked shit up.

Compassionate? No. Fuck no. A Colonel cannot afford to be compassionate. Especially not towards his regiment. But somehow, every Ranger at the Outpost experienced the same delusion that Colonel Isaac Howes actually saw us as more than pawns. We were his own little posse of amigos, and he never actually revealed it.

But we all knew.

It's really hard to explain it. I guess you would have to be in the service to understand it, but the relationship between Colonel Isaac Howes and his regiment was something deep.

An example? When I had first requested Spec. Ops Training, Colonel Isaac Howes had been dead set against it. The Colonel claimed that I was going to get killed, and that he didn't want that on his conscious. But I volunteered, and you never turn down a Special Operations volunteer. Two weeks after that request, a very haggard Colonel came into the infirmary himself to award me with my Spec. Ops bandanna.

-And to share my first "legal" drink with me.

Ever since then, I've found myself hankering towards a good, stiff, peaty, smooth scotch.

...

"Vauban, play nice with the Lance Corporal. I will pick you up from Brenda as soon as I'm done dealing with the Colonel. Brenda-"

"Yes, Bastard?"

"Make sure that Vauban gets a dose of her favorite fertilizer, then put her on R&R until I get back. You are both dismissed. Private-"

"Y-yes, Warrant Officer B-Bastard?"

"Quit your fucking stuttering. Call me Bastard. Private or not, you're still a Greenback, and Greenbacks adhere to efficiency. Warrant Officer has too many syllables. Save the rank for etiquette. We're all Rangers here."

"Y-yes, sir, War- Bastard."

"Stem the stammering, Pete. Now lead the way."

The march to Colonel Howes's office was _mostly_ silent. The little Private was as nervous as fuck. I thought about inquiring as to the nature of the summons, but I had my doubts that a Private would know. Even so, this newbie needed to be broken in.

"So what do you do, Pete?"

"Sir?"

"I'm assuming that you joined the Rangers with an agenda. What is your intended resume?" I was being patient, but that had everything to do with the Colonel. The man inspired me with a deep sense of leadership that few others could. Normally I'd just abuse the fresh meat, but lucky for Pete, his herald had saved him from my malice.

"I-I'm ah- trying for a Communications Officer." Pete wasn't getting any less nervous.

"A radio jockey?" I asked, my voice a monotone.

"Well, just a Radio Operator for now." Pete was beginning to ease up, perhaps assuming that I was interested in his plans.

I wasn't.

"Can you tell your 'Rogers' from your 'Overs' yet? Cause I swear, if it was your ass who got me and Carlos stuck at a-"

"I just transferred from the academy! This is my second day in Viridian!" Pete was panicking fast. The kid had a natural disposition towards panic it seemed.

"Hey! Don't you lose your fucking head with me! You keep it calm and professional. Remember, Pete, your fucking ability to maintain your cool is essential to your role in Viridian. Keep your Comms clean-cut and precise, and nobody is going to die because of a mis-com." I was ready to snap Pete's neck.

"Yes, sir!" Training took over for Pete, and he answered his Superior Officer appropriately.

"Good. You keep that fucking cool. Now about this summons?" I growled. Pete maintained his composure.

"Nothing I know about. All I know is that there's a Military Aide in the office with the Colonel."

That got me wondering.

"A Military Aide? What the hell is the Military doing in a Ranger Outpost? Wanting to see what some action looks like?"

…

A lot of people in the Confederacy think that the Rangers are an extension of the Military. They couldn't be more fucking wrong. The Military and the Rangers are completely separate divisions, with completely different purposes.

The Military kills people in wars.

The Rangers kill monsters every fucking day.

The Kanto-Johto Confederacy had not been involved in any wars for almost thirty years now. We still maintained a fighting force of men and mon in the event that war would rise again, but for now, the world seemed a pretty stable place. Meaning that the Military did absolutely nothing, and the Rangers were always fighting.

Our last War had been fought with Johto, and the end result had been a Confederacy. We got to the point where neither side wanted to fight anymore, and rather than kill each other off for resources, we decided to enter an accord.

Both sides would maintain their autonomy, and neither side would attempt to exploit the other. Instead, we'd pool revenue, and fund a limited central Government for ensuring the equal interest of our two nations. We'd also support each other militarily, just in case Unova or Kalos wanted a slice of our real estate. Kanto had a need for raw materials, and Johto had a need for finished products. Kanto had the industrial know-how, and Johto had the resources.

It was a match made in hell.

We were thirty years past the date that the armistice had been signed, and Johto and Kanto still couldn't stop pointing fingers at one another, accusing the other side of starting the war.

Fucking politicians spent more time bickering about the wrongs of the past instead cooperating together in order to make a righting of the future.

But what did you expect? Politicians have never changed. I mean, they're only ambitious backstabbing pricks just looking out for their own interests. Who can blame them for fucking the rest of us over? Even in the Pre-Brink, the historical archives are filled with the most ridiculous subjects argued about for centuries, all by politicians pushing their own ethics up other people's assholes.

The historical legislation that stood out the most for me, was of course, the Gay Marriage dispute and Global Climate Change 'debate.'

Gay Marriage had no right to be a part of any politician's campaign structure. Gay Marriage was harmless, but the idiots of the old world were afraid of it. They were disturbed by someone else's sexual preferences, and they wrote laws forbidding unions between homosexuals.

Can you fucking believe that?

For God's sake, how did homosexuality affect the politician's lives?

The answer?

It didn't. But they had their own God-given morales and they were going to jam them down everyone else's throats, regardless of the fact that nothing detrimental ever came from lesbians banging each other raunchy with rings on their fingers.

If that wasn't oppression, then I don't know what was.

And Global Climate Change?

What a fucking joke.

We had the evidence staring us right in the Goddamn face for centuries, but key political leaders kept denying it on the premise that it was going to cost too much to save our world from ourselves. They may have quoted misleading scripture in order to hide the truth, but profit and arrogance was the sole motivation for their continued abuse of the world.

If I didn't hate mon so much, I might have thanked them for the Brink Collapse.

'Cause toppling us off of our high ground and teaching us fear and humility probably saved the world.

Wow… That was a little more passionate than I meant to get into. Sorry about that. But I like to think that I've learned from mistakes of the past.

I just wish that our politicians would.

…

"Alright, we're here. You are dismissed, Private. Return to your comm station." Pete and I found the office, and I gave him leave of his herald duty, before knocking on the Colonel's door.

"Come in." Colonel Howes's deep voice beckoned me past the threshold.

"Warrant Officer Zane Bastard, reporting to a summons." I stood in the center of that office at the attention stance, my eyes dead ahead. I could make out the Colonel's spectacled face leaning over his desk, and a blue Class A uniform indicated Military personnel at the Colonel's shoulder.

Pete was not joking. This cat's insignia said Lieutenant, and I could tell by his age alone that he'd only ascended to that rank via a desk job pushing papers. He was way too young to have fought in the last war. My guess? The Lieutenant was from the Military's Internal Affairs Division.

Which made his presence in the Viridian's Ranger Outpost all the more curious.

The Colonel took his time reviewing and signing whatever was on his desk, before looking up at me with a tired expression on his face. It took him a full minute of staring at me to give the rest command.

"At ease, Bastard." I assumed the rest stance.

"You're probably wondering why I called you here today, especially seeing as a Military Aide is standing presently at my side." The Colonel only spoke in a husky drawl, every word he spoke sounded heavy and abrasive.

"That is affirmative, Colonel." I answered in a voice reserved for Vets and the Colonel. No bullshit attitude inflected in my tone.

"Three reasons, Bastard." The Colonel let his breath out slowly and quietly from his nose, in what some might interpret as a sigh.

"Item number one. Warrant Officer Amber Hail handed me this." The Colonel lifted the piece of paper off of his desk.

" _I don't think that twerking it to a Sandshrew qualifies as work, Warrant Officer Hail."_ The Colonel began a recital.

" _No, Carlos is funny. I just speak the Goddamn truth, whether you appreciate it or not, bitch."_

" _Hell? Oh fuck me. Hell for me is gonna be an expanse of naked Ambers, all spreading their spindly fucking anorexic legs. Please Amber. Don't send me to Hell. I don't want to know what you look like bare ass naked."_

" _I wouldn't stick my dick inside your craw even if I had Carlos dress it up all nice-and-tidy-like in an umbrella first, simply because I can't tolerate your crazy-stanky-funk."_ The Colonel finished his monotone recital, and began to rub his eyes with his spare hand.

"What are you doing in the Rangers, Bastard? You could make a fortune being a Goddamn comedian." The Colonel threw Amber's grievance into his waste basket.

"Though I do not contest your claims of endowment, Bastard... I highly doubt that an umbrella is necessary." There was a tiny lift to the corner of my Colonel's mouth.

"I'm prone to exaggeration, Colonel. But when it comes to my manhood, no exaggeration is necessary." The Aide's eyes widened in shock. My Colonel just started chuckling.

"Well, that line closes item number one. Item number two." The Colonel looked up to the Military Aide. The Aide lifted a small aluminium briefcase, and placed it on the Colonel's desk. The Colonel punched in whatever combo was necessary, unfastened the clips, and pivoted the briefcase's front towards me.

"High Command has approved your requisition for a Hunter-Killer. Congratulations, Warrant Officer." I approached the briefcase, and opened it. There were two items inside. One was a pink and white paper manifest; a dispatch. The other, resting in a tight nest among the black foam, was a pokeball.

"Well, Bastard… Show me your new dog." The Colonel leaned back in his desk. I lifted the pokeball from the foam, and glanced at the dispatch's bottom right corner.

 _PKMN Callsign: Cortez._

"Cortez, report." I barked, releasing the pokeball's trigger. A beam of white poured out into the Colonel's office, and condensed into an orange and black Growlithe. I was stunned. I had requested a pretrained Hunter Killer from High Command, but this-

"Colonel, I thought that I put in a requisition for a hound... Not a giant scab."

This dog was fucked up beyond all belief. His entire right side was all pitted scar tissue. The corresponding side of his head was bald, and without the hair, a Growlithe's face doesn't really look all that dissimilar from their skulls.

The hound just fixed me with two calm eyes. His left eye was hazel-green. The right eye was stark purple and bloodshot.

"Cortez was not only trained by the Military, Warrant Officer Bastard. Cortez was deployed in the recent separatist skirmishes in Fuschia. He was wounded killing a enemy detachment of Grimers. Cortez has combat experience to go along with that training, and his condition does not inhibit his abilities in the least." It was the Aide speaking now, and he had something of a squeal for a voice. Despite the irritating sound of the Aide's voice, I was now regarding the hound before me with new respect.

This dog was a Veteran, and I'd just insulted his service.

"My apologies, Cortez. I had not the privilege of reviewing your dispatch before our first encounter." I met that dog's eyes with sincerity. The still pooch just swelled slowly and sighed, never blinking or changing expression.

I picked up Cortez's dispatch, and began perusing the contents.

"...It says here that Cortez isn't just a Hunter-Killer. Pathfinder too, top hound in the kennels. Huh. That'll be useful. ...Hold up… He under went the Military's Spec. Ops Training with his assigned Military Trainer?" I looked over to the Aide in awe.

"Cortez was the best hound we had in the whole Fuschia district. He went through everything, and he did everything." The Aide replied. That got me looking back at this dog pensively.

"Was the best?" I asked. The Aide coughed. Cortez never shifted.

"...What happened to his Commanding Officer?" I asked, voice getting deep. The first sign of emotion crossed that dog's fucked up face.

"Died." The Aide replied. That got my teeth gritting.

"So why the hell is this dog still alive?" I asked dangerously. Service mon are expected to die for their Trainers. We beat that into them. If a human life is endangered, it is a Service mon's explicit duty to lay down their own life in order to save that human life. Vauban was trained that way, and even Darwin was trained as such. Both the Rangers and the Military do not view our mon as pets. We are not Trainers.

Our mon are disposable weapons, and _we_ are trained to use them as such.

"It was a domestic dispute. Not a wartime confrontation." The Aide replied, respectfully. I dropped the anger at once. Cortez was probably in a Military kennel while his Commanding Officer was out on leave. That Commanding Officer never came back from leave.

"Well, Cortez… It looks like I owe you another apology." I knelt down to one knee before Cortez, and took his fleshy jaw in a hand. I lifted his dogged eyes up to mine, and held his gaze for a moment, before finally uttering-

"...And I am truly sorry for your loss." The pooch swallowed. There was something deep to this dog, make no mistake.

There was something _real_ deep down to Cortez.

"I don't know, Colonel. I think that High Command outdid themselves with this one. This dog is practically the Growlithe version of me. A perfect match." I reported as I rose from Cortez. This dog was incredibly quiet. Especially for a Growlithe. I was looking right at him, and I could barely tell that Cortez was in the room.

"I'm glad to hear that Cortez exceeds your expectations, Bastard. We have high hopes that you will be able to rehabilitate him into the role of a Ranger." The Colonel replied. I looked back at Cortez, trying to get him to meet my eyes again.

"I don't know how much work I'm gonna have to do, Colonel. This dog is already as much of a Ranger as I am." Cortez glanced at me. He heard that subtle tone in my voice, and his eyes answered to it.

The Call of Brotherhood.

"Pleased to hear it. Now onto item number three." The Colonel closed the briefcase, and the Military Aide removed it from the desk.

"As you may know, Viridian Outpost got lucky this year. A lot of new recruits applied to Viridian, and High Command saw fit to send them here. We're looking at record personnel numbers now, Bastard. Even if record numbers isn't enough." The Colonel fixed me with a dead stare.

"We're forming a new outfit, Ranger. Call sign Echo. Six man unit. And we need a Commanding Officer." The Colonel looked at me sternly, and the Military aide was watching me like a starving Drowzee.

Creepy fucker.

"I can provide you with a list of recommendations for Echo's CO immediately, sir." I knew where this was going, but I wasn't gonna show it. The Colonel fixed me with barest hint of amusement in his eyes.

"You are the recommendation, Bastard." The Colonel played along. He could see right to my gloating core. Finally, my own Command. Me, the Commanding Officer of Echo. I couldn't wait-

"One thing, Bastard." The Colonel cut my rising smirk off at the cheek. That wasn't a good tone.

"Echo will be comprised of Walkouts."

I dropped the mother of all F-bombs right there on the Colonel's desk. Fuck etiquette. Fuck Echo. Fuck this.

Fucking Walkouts?!

"Echo will be deployed into the Frontier. Long term sustained Patrols in sector Charlie. I thought that you might appreciate leaving Firewatch behind, Bastard. If not, I'd like to see that list of CO candidates." The Colonel was as cool as a Persian. My outburst had not shaken him, or even disappointed him in the least. The Frontier? My own squad? I could smell my promotion cooking in the Colonel's desk.

"I humbly rescind my previous statement, and at a word from my Colonel; I will duly express my gratitude on hands and knees." I told it to him straight. That got a chuckle out of both my Colonel and the Aide.

They didn't call me the 'Fucking Bastard' for nothing.

"Well then, Echo Commander, your detachment will depart this Outpost tomorrow morning at O'-Nine-hundred hours. Your destination will be Frontier Charlie. Your squad's mission will be to dust her off, and get the lights warmed up. If another detachment finds themselves in sector Charlie and in need of rest, I expect Echo Squad to have a homecoming prepared for them. On top that, Echo will secure and maintain sector Charlie. We are expanding, Bastard. It's high time the Rangers take back what's ours." The Colonel was now smiling in full, and so was I.

"Permission to answer in a battle cry." I requested. The Colonel was already chuckling.

"Granted."

"FU-UCK YE-ASSS!" I roared it at the top of my lungs. The Aide staggered back, laughing. I doubt he saw that kind of enthusiasm in the Military.

"You are to report to the Quartermaster at O'-five-hundred hours tomorrow morning for your field tack. After Second-Lieutenant Raynes clears you and grants you the manifest, you are then to report directly to my office. Skip breakfast. We'll dine over the details." The Colonel was closing one of the best days of my life, but he had a cherry to add to the top.

"Last thing, Bastard." The Colonel cut the giggles. I was all ears.

"I'm pulling you off of Firewatch tonight. You are getting some sleep, and you will make it a habit. The Commander of Echo Squad will be at his best at all times. Do I make myself clear?" The Colonel was not fucking around, and I was not gonna test him with my wits. Anyways-

-I was getting officially chalked up for R&R when I was supposed to be docked for Firewatch with Amber.

Win-fucking-Win.

"These eyes will close and they will not open until their shadows fade." I swore an oath.

"Very good, Warrant Officer Zane Bastard. You are dismissed." The Colonel granted me leave, and I called Cortez to my shadow.

"Come on, Cortez. It's time for you to meet the rest of my regiment." I smiled at the weary dog as we trucked it towards the clinic. I laid a quizzical eye on Cortez.

"Correction. _Our_ regiment." I rephrased, looking for a reaction. Cortez's tail twitched ever so slightly. My smile grew even wider.

I fucking knew it.

...

"What the fuck is this?" I emptied the contents of my G.I. field package on the Quartermaster's counter.

A mountain of MREs? Check. Water purification unit? Check. First Aide and Trauma Kit? Check. Four rolls of toilet Paper? I was gonna need more of that if I was gonna be eating MREs, but otherwise, Check. Crash Kit replete with a compression tarp? Check. Wetstone? Check. One-hundred meters of rope? Check. C4?

C4?

Problem.

"Where the fuck is my C4?" I shuffled through all of the other useless shit, looking for my ordnance.

"Where's my Thermite? Where's my Det. Cord? Where's my ANFO?" I couldn't even find a stick of TNT in that crapshoot.

"Where the fuck is my fucking ordnance?!" I just about swept the whole pile on the floor, but the Quartermaster's lonely stinkeye stopped me dead.

"Command's requisition didn't clear you for the heavy works, Bastard. Blasting Caps and a Flare Gun is all you're getting." The Quartermaster informed me in a tone that was an inch away from forgotten patience.

"Are you shitting me?!" The Quartermaster's one-eyed glare told me everything I needed to know.

"Well that's fucked. Why don't you just give me some fucking bottle rockets and a package of firecrackers then?" Man, I was pissed. How was I supposed to blow shit up with Blasting Caps and a fucking Flare Gun?

"Look at my Badge. See that numerical code? That reads 'Sapper.' Now I know you landed a comfy position behind a counter, but even you should know that 'Sapper' means blow shit up. So why the fuck is Command handing me hairspray and matches?" I was damn near yelling at a Senior Officer. If I hadn't given her the best sex of her Ranger life, my ass would be in a holding cell in T-minus: One-veteranshitstorm.

"You're going into the Frontier, Bastard. Long haul. You're not doing an S-rank pursuit of a Trainer-killing Nidoking. You're on stake out. Stake out means quiet. Quiet means Blasting Caps and a Flare Gun. Sorry, Sapper. But you aren't getting an ounce of C4 from me without Command's approval." I should have given her props for not setting me straight right then and there, but I was the Fucking Bastard.

And the Fucking Bastard needs his C4.

"Come on, Trish. Just sneak me a pound of fun and a remote detonator. I need my fucking ordnance, and I need it now." My voice sounded fucking desperate. I was hooked on things that go boom. A demolitions junkie. The single most impressive thing about my Sapper career is that I still have all my parts in the proper order.

And after some of the shit I pulled, they should've been sweeping my head into a Pallet Town dumpster, and knocking my feet off of a Pewter City roof. All in the same damn day.

Trish wasn't having any of it. She was not falling for my puppydog eyed routine or my pouting lips.

"You can call me Second-Lieutenant Raynes... Warrant Officer Bastard."

Ouch. She'd just put my dick in impound.

And I still didn't have my fucking C4 to show for it.

"Fine. I'll figure something out." I crammed all that needless shit back into my pack with an attitude ripe enough to sour fresh milk.

I was fuming at the gills.

"Hold up, Bastard." Trish stopped me cold with that tantalizingly evil tone. I looked up from my disappointing package of shameful excuses and saw Trish handing me a holster with a sidearm in it.

I locked the fuck up.

"You're a Squad Leader now, Bastard. Squad Leaders don't go into the field without their G.I. Nine-millimeter as standard. Congratulations."

Congratulations? No. No fucking way. There was no fucking way that this was happening. I couldn't take that gun.

That thing scared the shit out of me.

You see, explosions are my thing, cause I can stand far fucking away from the chorus. I can rig a Beedrill hive with Det. Cord, and leave a ring of C4 around ground zero's outer perimeter. Then I can walk off, blow the hive, and sit on the C4's trigger until the rodeo shows up.

Mon do not take very well to explosions. I had to train Vauban like a motherfucker to keep her from cutting loose and going psycho on me anytime something went boom.

It's fucking genetic. Mon have got some fucked up genes compared to anything that evolved on Earth, and that's why they were able to kick our ruddy asses raw back during the Brink Collapse.

The Brink Collapse is also why mon fucking hate explosions so Goddamn much. It took them all of two generations to develop an instinctive bloodrage reaction to the boom. They did not like getting shot up or blown up, and that became an inherent behavior.

If I shot that gun in the Forest, even with that tiny explosion going off an inch above my hand, every fucking pissed-off mon within a five klick radius would be booking it to the point of origin looking to kill my ass.

Pulling a gun's trigger was the same damn thing as committing seppuku. The. Very. Last. Fucking. Resort. I did not want that fucking thing anywhere near me.

"You gonna stand there all day, looking like you just shat your pants... Or are you going to take your sidearm, Squad Leader?" If I didn't know any better, I'd say that Trish was enjoying my reaction.

I do know better.

She was fucking loving it.

"I'm never gonna fucking use that thing." My voice sounded foreign even to me, that's how scared I was.

"If it's any consolation, Bastard? I hope that you never have to."

Fuck you, Trish.

Fuck.

You.

…

"Times have changed, Bastard." The Colonel informed me as we tucked into an early breakfast in his office. Galapagos, the Colonel's Blastoise, was taking his morning meal as well. It looked and smelled like a bowl of petrified shit, but that Blastoise was chomping it up like it was prime rib. That fucking turtle was huge. I'd seen Galapagos in the field before, but out in the open; he just looked big. Inside a building though, that was a whole nother story. He was _fucking huge._ Galapagos could barely stand up straight without his shell scraping the office ceiling, and that was with his dual hydro cannons stowed.

That was one scary turtle, let me tell you.

"You would know more about the times than I would, sir." I replied. The Colonel smiled, though he seemed a little sad.

"I know that I'm an old Ranger, Zane... but I can still kick your ass." The Colonel reminded me. Galapagos looked up from his bowl of turds, and gave me a dangerous eye.

"I never meant it like that, sir. I suppose that I should have considered the phrasing of my reply." I was straight up with Colonel. I had not meant any disrespect to him regarding his age.

"And how would you rephrase it, Bastard?" The Colonel asked, returning to his serious self.

"Enlighten me." I answered. The Colonel worked his mouth.

"I guess you're not always a bastard, Zane." The Colonel sighed, and grew pensive. It was a while before he answered me.

"It used to be, back when I was your age… That the Rangers were considered the most honorable outfit in the world. People used to form lines at the recruiting office, just to serve in the capacity of that honor…" The Colonel was going back into his own past, and I was privileged to accompany him.

"Men and women, flocking to earn their Berets… Back then, people knew… People understood." The Colonel shook his head. I swallowed. I knew that recruitment was at an all time low for the Rangers, but I only saw the work that absent Berets left me and the Vets. I never noticed the emotional damage this lack of commitment could do to the oldest of our members.

"Now? We have to pamper people just to get them into a uniform. Walkouts? We didn't have Walkouts when I was your age. People understood the responsibility of that Beret. People knew that if they didn't do what was necessary, everything that they loved was going to die…" The Colonel rubbed the tip of his nose.

"And now we've got every soft-headed Trainer and their ignorant fucking mothers banging on our front door, accusing us of something called, ' _Pokemon Abuse...'_ What the hell has this world come too?" The Colonel growled in disgust.

"They're soft, sir. Like you said, ignorant. The Rangers of the past gave up everything for these people, and they aren't even remembered for it. Worse, the imbeciles that we're fighting for these days can't even tell the difference between a feral and domestic. You let those Trainers and their mothers into the Viridian reserve, and they'd kill themselves off trying to pet a Beedrill." My voice was raw venom. The Colonel groaned, aging before my very eyes.

"Everybody thinks that the threat is gone. Everybody thinks that if we leave the mon alone, the mon will leave us alone. God help us all if the politicians ever start talking like that…" I was no longer sitting across from the Colonel. All of his borders were removed. I was sitting across from the man who cast the shadow of the Colonel. I was sitting across from Isaac Howes. I could not believe that my Colonel respected the Bastard enough to reveal this man to me.

"The Rangers of the past were too successful. We took away people's need to fear. Since that mistake; everybody has grown complacent, ignorant, unwilling, even belligerent... And my Rangers are dying off in the fields, all in the effort of trying to pick up for society's slack." The Colonel was furious, in a quiet, brooding way.

"...I saw the casualty reports, sir. And I know that recruitment isn't covering them…" I whispered. The Colonel slammed his fist down into his desk, jarring his plate of eggs. Galapagos was watching him with a calm eye. Supportive, yet separate of his Commanding Officer.

"...I need Rangers, Bastard… And I need them now." The Colonel got himself back under control.

"You might have been wondering why I took you off of the S-ranks when the Walkouts came home?" The Colonel asked. I swallowed again, and nodded.

"I did it because you are the first recruit that I've had in twenty years who understands what it means to be a Ranger. Hell, you even put the seventeen-year old me to shame. You are the lonely gem in this new generation of Rangers, Zane. And both me and High Command have noticed it. You will get your Black Beret... And you will earn it, Zane." The Colonel was fixing me with a steely eye. I freely admit to choking up right there. I was seconds away from tears. That was the most profound and touching thing my Colonel had ever told me.

"I put you back in your class's fold for a reason. I wanted them to see what a Ranger should _be_. I wanted someone from their generation to provide the example. I know that they're afraid of you, Zane... but I also know that they idolize you." This was getting to be too much. Anymore of this, and I would be requesting tissues.

"I need you to take the five best individuals of your class, the ones that have the highest potential… And I need you turn these Walkouts into Rangers." The Colonel popped open a bottle of scotch, and poured two shots full.

"Can you do that, Zane? Can you do what I cannot?" The Colonel was beginning to diminish. I did not want to see this great man crushed by the inequities of his shit junior regiment.

"Even if it kills me, Colonel Howes. I swear that the five you give me will be even more than me." The Colonel began to laugh, passing me the peaty morning syrup.

"Six little Bastards… Shit Zane, if you can do that… We'll end up turning Echo Squad into Blackhat Team number nine." The Colonel was laughing, and I was struggling not to cry. Both the Colonel's faith and praise meant more to me than the world.

"You're not going to be very happy with me when you see Echo Squad's candidates. I already had them dragged out of their bunks and brought before Second-Lieutenant Raynes for loadout. They'll be waiting for us when we get out into the yard. Trust me, Zane… Despite their personalities, they are the best the academy has to offer." The Colonel sighed, supping at his scotch.

"Well, as long as Warrant Officer Amber Hail isn't a part of Echo, I won't have any problems with them." I joked, laughing my ass off. It was a moment before I realized that my Colonel wasn't laughing with me. I stopped laughing and looked at the man. He was staring at me something severe. Galapagos began to guffaw. I froze, before my horrified voice could find the wind with which to feed speech.

"Oh, you gotta be fucking me-"

…

"Atten-hut!" The Yard Commander barked out as soon as the Colonel and I marched out into the early morning sun. I took my place next to the Yard Commander and his flagpole, while the Colonel saluted the Ranger's standards above me. Then Colonel Isaac Howes took his place before my Echo, and addressed the five Walkouts standing at attention in the yard.

"My Rangers…" The Colonel paced a line before my five underlings.

"You are all probably wondering what you are doing here today, dressed in your BDUs and sporting your designated tactical loadouts." The Colonel came to a halt at the far end of the line, without facing the poor sucker standing there. The Yard Commander had spread the five out nice and wide, making everyone of them feel like an island.

"There is an answer for that. When you walked into your recruiter's office, you swore an Oath before both an Officer and your nation. You swore an Oath to answer a call." The Colonel walked back to the center, and stood far enough back so that all eyes could see him.

"Do you hear that, Rangers?" The Colonel cupped a hand around his right ear. The new morning was absolutely silent.

"Listen... Listen closely…" The Commander whispered, but that whisper carried well through the quiet.

"THAT IS THE SOUND OF THE CALL, RANGERS!" The Colonel roared. My unit jumped. I found that fucking disgraceful, and I let it be known in my furious glare.

"EACH AND EVERYONE OF YOU- is a blight standing in a uniform. My uniform." The Colonel sounded pissed, and every delinquent in that line struggled to maintain composure.

"However… blights though you may be, everyone of you are best blights I have. And the best of the blights is not going to be enough, Rangers." The Colonel resumed pacing, though he fell short of a full line.

"I have had it with you fucks living the easy life. I am tired of watching you waste in my uniform. You are going to shape up. You are going to make a difference. When you come back to this Outpost in six months… Everyone of you will be a _Ranger_ in my uniform. Or you will be buried with full honors in my uniform." The Colonel worked his way down into a harsh whisper, and closed by falling back into the far center.

"Echo Commander Bastard."

"Sir!" I stepped forward.

"They are in your charge now. Do not disappoint me. Anyone of you…" The Colonel growled the last, glaring at the line.

"Close ranks, Echo." I gave my first order as Squad Commander, and watched as it was flawlessly executed.

You're all gonna be hating me real soon, don't you worry…

"Then take them to the field, Bastard. They are all yours." The Colonel withdrew, leaving me with only the newly formed Echo Squad and the Yard Commander.

"Let's see here…" I took the Colonel footprints pacing, looking down at the ground, grinning.

"Corporal Garcia. I'm not surprised to see you in my outfit." I addressed the members of Echo starting from the right.

"Infantry, correct?" I asked the Corporal.

"Yes, sir." Carlos answered me with a soldier's face.

"Good. So I'm not gonna be all by my lonesome up on the front line. Glad to hear it. I'm making you my Second in Command." Carlos stiffened up.

"-But it has nothing to do with you applying those academy acclaimed leadership skills of yours. I'm making you my Second in Command because your face makes me laugh. I want that ugly fucking face as close to me as possible, just cause I'm gonna need a laugh… dealing with your inadequacies." I growled, moving on to the next individual.

"Private Erin Stilts. We've never met, have we?" I asked. He was young, a complete novice, straight out of the academy.

"No, sir." The Private answered.

"But you know who I am?" I asked, voice dipping dangerously low.

"Yes, sir."

"Well… Who am I?" I asked, seemingly all friendly. The Private wasn't dumb enough to fall for it. Good.

"You're the Bastard, sir." The Private's voice hinted at uncertainty. Not good, Stilts, not good at all.

"Who am I?" My voice skipped an octave as I bore down on him like a thunderhead. Stilts was cracking.

"I COULD HAVE SWORN THERE WAS A 'FUCKING' IN MY TITLE PRIVATE! SO WHO AM I?" I flecked his face and Beret with spit, my roaring mouth three inches from his person.

"YOU ARE THE FUCKING BASTARD, SIR!" The Private roared back. Better, Stilts. Better.

"No." I informed the shaken Private.

"My name is 'God' to you, Private. So tell God that you understand him when he speaks directly to you." I whispered.

"Yes, sir." Stilts answered, worried.

"Yes sir, who?" I pressed.

"Yes sir, God!" Stilts answered.

"Yes sir, GOD WHO?!" I roared it into his ears.

"YES SIR, GOD FUCKING BASTARD!" Bingo. I smiled as I stood back.

"Logistics and Navigation. Sucks to be you. I just got me a dog that makes your skillset redundant. Guess I'll have you navigate Echo a choice location for a logical latrine." I grumbled as I moved on.

"Ah… Lance Corporal Eckleson. I've seen your face an awful lot. I've actually seen even more than that. And I was quite pleased with what I saw." Brenda began to turn red at the ears, but she maintained that stoic face.

"You know, I'd never guess that your dumb ass was actually qualified for both Mon and Human medical service applications. Dual majors at your age? How the hell can you be so smart and so fucking stupid?" I asked, disgust rank in my voice. Brenda quivered. I'd let it go for now, but she was gonna harden up real fast.

"Echo, if you get a splinter, come to Eckleson with it. As you can probably tell by her perfect eyebrows, she's a fucking wizardess with a pair of tweezers. But if you're bleeding, you might want to come to me instead. I'll give you a round right between the eyes and a guarantee that its survivability is higher than anything Eckleson would administer." I almost made Brenda cry with my crude mockery. But it was my job to break all these Walkouts down, and it was my duty to build them back up into Rangers. Brenda would be crying very shortly. I was gonna have to be extra harsh with Brenda's soft ass. I moved to the next unit down the line.

"Priiii-vaaaate -Pete. Well I'll be. The squirrely little fuck I met yesterday. Comms, correct?" I actually sounded gleeful to see his scrawny ass in my Echo Squad.

"Affirmative, Bastard." The Private was quick with an answer. I glared at him.

"Excuse me?" I asked, deadly fucking serious. The Private tensed up.

"What did you call me?" I asked, my voice falling to the bottom of my formidable range. Pete took a steadying breath through his nostrils.

"No, no, Pete. You did well. You remembered what I taught you. Keep it up, Private. Very good, Radio Operator. Very good, but unfortunately…" I started all friendly and amused, before topping it off with the whistle of that dire bombshell.

"We are headed into the Frontier. With a skeleton crew. You are not going to be sitting cozy in front of a Comm station, Private. Your ass is going to be getting down and dirty with the rest of Echo in the field. Including combat situations. Buck up now, and get ready to relearn what you forgot back in the academy." Pete went fucking white and his legs began to tremble. I kicked his boots, and spat between his ankles.

"Remember what I told you about your cool, Pete." I growled, moving down to the final head. I wore my biggest, most evil, nastiest fucking grin for this one.

"Well…" My breath rumbled across my larynx as my wicked smile grew even nastier.

"...Oh… Ah... Well…" My demeanor was full on throat-slitter mode.

"...Give me a moment... to bask in your presence…"

"Warrant-"

"- _Officer…"_

"-Amber…"

" _-Hail."_ She was already wide eyed and white as snow. I was gloating so damn hardcore that I feared for my heart's health. It was beating that fucking hard.

"...Words… Cannot… Describe my pleasure… _Warrant Officer... Amber Hail…_ " Oh, she was shaking now.

"I could tell you… you know? I could tell you the craziest, most terrifying, most _inhumane_ stories about where we are going… But you… You know better than that…" My face was a scant inch away from Amber's. All she could see was my crazy eyes, and my mean as hell smile.

"...You know where the real monster is, don't you?" Amber could barely hear my whisper for all the malice in it. Amber was about to faint, but I wasn't done with her yet. Not for one second. I had six months to turn her anorexic ass into spit and paste. I couldn't wait to get started.

"I'm going to enjoy our time together, Warrant. -Officer. -Amber. -Hail... Am I gonna love being your CO..." Right now, Amber was regretting ever joining up with the Rangers. She'd be properly regretting her birth by the time I was finished with her.

"I can't believe that the Colonel assigned you as Echo's Field-Tech. I could do the job ten times better than you can, but I'm Echo's CO. If you want to eat. -If you want to sleep indoors. _-If you want to stay alive…_ You will make yourself an asset to Echo's mission... _and only an asset_. Do. I Make. My-self. _Clear?_ " It was all Amber could do to swallow and nod. I'd already scared her nasty voice away.

"Good. Don't test me, Amber. If you become a fucking liability…" I let the consequences of ignoring that warning hang above her head, and even with her limited scope of an imagination, Amber could well guess at what would happen for trying the Fucking Bastard's patience when he governed her very life.

I fell back to the center, and stood where the Colonel had when he had first addressed them all.

"We are going into the Frontier, Rangers. Now I know that none of you have gone into the Frontier without a Squad of Vets covering your asses on introduction… But we are diving into that no-man's land with nothing more than our training and our wits. Everyone of you are going to give me one-hundred-and-fifty fucking percent. Or we will all die. Do not take my words for a dumb joke. I have gone balls deep into the Frontier, and I know what is waiting for us in there. You cannot slip. You cannot make a single mistake. You cannot _hesitate…"_ I froze and glared at everyone of them in turn, giving them the full gravity of my bearing.

" _Or we will all die."_ Everybody was really scared now. Now... It was an appropriate time to start building them back up

"Now the Colonel has faith in you, and he is telling me to have faith in you as well. But faith is not granted freely, it is earned. Now everyone of you have accolades warranting a Ranger. You will be proving that to me, and you will be proving to me your capacity to learn and survive. I have no faith in any of you all whatsoever. But I have faith in my Colonel, and I know that Isaac Howes would never lead us astray. You are mine, Echo. And I am yours. Remember that… Remember that when we are in the blood and the screaming, and the fear and the hate, and the living and the dying… We are Echo Squad. And we will not let down our Echo Squad... Now give me a roar."

"AD HONOREM!"

They shouted past their meekness and fear, and I demanded another.

"AD HONOREM!" My Rangers screamed out our calling loud and sharp.

"ONCE MORE, ECHO!" I joined them in that timeless battle cry, adding my voice to theirs. One voice. One cry. One unit.

 _Ad honorem._

"Yard Commander." I called out to the Superior of the yard.

"Commander Bastard, what is your request?" The Yard Commander put his dead eyes on me.

"Requesting permission to take leave of Prime Outpost and lead Echo into the Frontier." I placed my request.

"Permission granted, Commander Bastard. Farewell, Echo. Remember those who walked before you into the grey yonder. Remember those who led the first bleeding into the Brink. Remember those who answered the call, even when the world itself was weeping. Remember those who willingly died so that we may live, and honour their sacrifice in every action."

"...Tu Ne Cede Malis Sed Contra Audentior Ito." I recited the final line of our Oath, feeling the full weight of those spoken words within my heart.

"Tu Ne Cede Malis Sed Contra Audentior Ito..." Echo repeated my utterance in kind. The Yard Commander lifted _his_ salute to us, and we raised ours to his.

"To the front, Echo." The Yard Officer was relieved of his salute, and stood back in the rest position.

"ECHO SQUAD! ATTEN-SHUN!" I shouted to my waiting unit. Every heel clicked together.

"READY-! -MARCH!" Every boot in Echo took two heavy steps in preparation.

"FOR-WARD! -MARCH!" I took that first step forward, at the head of my first Squad, and I marched myself and them out into that gray yonder.

…

Echo started down on one of Viridian's established routes, hard packed earth beneath our feet, massive tiered walls on either side, and heavy gauge mesh covering the partition above our heads. Panic buttons every three-hundred meters. We were in a safe zone.

"Command, this is Echo. We are seeing increased Trainer activity on the M-straight. Should we maintain position until they move on? Over." I muttered a report into my radio.

"Negative, Echo squad. Firewatch units are already monitoring the M-straight. Proceed to Frontier Charlie. Over." Command sent me some relief in the form of Walkout patrols.

"Roger that Command. This is Echo, over and out." I killed the line, and turned to Carlos.

"Glad to be moving up in world there, Carlos?" I tried to be amiable, but Carlos was unusually detached. He couldn't even nod or shake his head to my query. Well, maybe 'scared shitless' was a more fitting expression than 'detached.'

"I'll take that as a 'no.' Dammit Carlos, I thought that you would be all gung-ho about this." I shook my head and chuckled.

"Permission to speak freely?" Carlos requested in a voice weak enough warrant vomiting.

"Granted." I grinned at him.

"I'm not all that gung-ho about getting disemboweled, sir." Carlos gurgled. I started laughing.

"Neither am I, Carlos. But that only happens if something goes wrong." I gave him an evil grin.

" _...And something always does go wrong…"_ My danger voice was living it up, even as Carlos staggered.

"Ease up there, Infantry. We're still on the M-straight. You can piss your pants when a Nidoking impales Pete to a tree, and only after it rapes Amber to death." I sounded gleeful, despite my unit's dread. I really was looking forward to this.

"Do… Do we have a plan of action just incase we come across a hive of Beedrill?" Carlos must have eaten his bravery without the milk this morning. He should have known better than to ask the Fucking Bastard that.

"Oh yeah, we got ourselves a nice tight contingency on the Beedrill front." I told Carlos reassuringly. A brief moment of relief shone in his eyes.

"We drop whatever the fuck we're carrying and we run fucking fast. You and I are the fastest here, so we'll be at the head of the retreat. I don't know about Erin, Pete, or Amber though. They'll probably be getting needle-raped in the first one-hundred meters of the retreat. I do hope that Brenda makes it, if for no other reason than because I want something nice to look at when we have to stop for a fucking breather." I said it all with the happiest voice in the whole Goddamn world. Carlos came to a dead stop.

"...Bastard?" Carlos's voice cracked on my name. I groaned.

"Fuck me, Carlos. It was a joke. My contingency for the Beedrill is avoidance. It shouldn't be that hard for my new hound to sniff out their hives and plot a course around them. If we do make contact with a swarm of Delta-Twos, then you, me, Vauban, and Riot are going to cover the others while Cortez gets them all to safety. I've fought the fucking Beedrill before, I know how to handle a swarm. I'll have Cortez torch a section of Viridian before he departs. You and I are going to stay fucking close to those flames, while Riot and Vauban mop up. Beedrill like the light, but fire don't agree with them. They'll throw themselves right into the flames and fucking burn themselves to death. You and I may get burned a little too, but it will feel a whole hell of a lot better then getting fucking killed." I laid out the contingency for him and the Squad gathered behind him. Carlos let his breath out in a loud sigh.

"...Did the Vets teach you that?" Carlos asked, the first tinge of hope I'd heard from my Squad yet inflected in his voice. I smirked at Carlos and every Squad member beyond him.

"They taught me a whole hell of a lot more than that. For fuck's sake, Carlos… I had to kill a fucking Nidoking wearing only my Beret and equipped with only a BAMF. No Vauban allowed. That was my graduation from Spec. Ops. Have some fucking faith in the Bastard, would you?" I wound that smirk down into scowl of disgust. Everybody's eyes had gone wide.

"...You killed a Delta-Three with only a knife and a Beret?" Pete was all googly eyed in his staring.

"That is the final requirement for completing Spec. Ops training. Yes, I can kill a Delta-Three with only a knife in one-on-one combat. Viridian doesn't have anything above a Delta-Three. You can all breath easy now." I shook my head in exasperation. This lot didn't even review the requirements for Spec. Ops training. No wonder why they were so damn scared.

"Of course, the ones I'm worried about are the Nidorino. Those bastards are hunting for poon in Packs right now. I do not want to return what is left of Brenda to her better half in a bucket. So Carlos, you and I have to talk strategy on the Nidorino. They sniff us out, and they'll be coming for us." It was probably not the most comforting thing for me to say in front of my nervous Squad, but they _needed_ to know. I needed them to be prepared for the eventuality of a total scrapping.

"Everyone of you will have to contribute to the fight if we do come across the Nidorino. Remember, you have mon not only for assistance in your specialized duties, but also to protect your asses. That said, every one of you will draw knives and move to engage the Pack. We need to work together as a unit, or we'll die together as a unit. Are we clear, Rangers?" I asked, the sound of command killing every other tone in my voice.

"...I wanna go home…" Brenda started crying on the spot. My voice found a new level of loud, just for Brenda.

"DRY YOUR FUCKING EYES, RANGER! HOME IS NOT AN OPTION! IF ANY OF YOU WALKOUTS HAD CONSIDERED WHAT THE RANGER'S OATH MEANT WHEN YOU FIRST MADE THE VOW, WOULD YOU STILL BE HERE?!" I was screaming it right in Brenda's face. My whole Squad was gonna fall apart at this rate. It was my duty to keep that from happening.

Brenda was only crying louder. I sighed quite loudly myself.

"Carlos, take point. Lance Corporal Eckleson and I are going to have a little talk in the back, nice and private like." I growled to my unit.

"Keep them in formation, Carlos…" I warned my second in Command as he moved to execute my orders.

"Bren, you are back here with me." I waited until the rest of Echo Squad had moved on a bit, before taking my stride next to Brenda.

"Listen to me, kid... It is high time that you grow up. You are a Ranger. Now I know, even better than you, I might add; how scary death is. I know a lot more about death than you, Bren. Do you see me up there, crying about the possibility of myself dying?" My voice alternated between a harsh whisper and a soft reassurance. Brenda was struggling to get herself under control.

"...But you know what you're doing-"

"No. I do not. It would be reckless and vain for any soldier to assume that. I have absolute confidence in my abilities, not a conviction that they are going keep me safe. That said, I cannot afford to doubt. Not for one second. I have to keep my head on for my Squad. I don't want you, Carlos, Pete, Erin, or even fucking Amber dying on me. Hell if comes down to it, and I have to make a call, Amber is the first on the list-" That made Brenda chuckle a bit.

"-But I can only keep _my_ head on for my Squad, Bren. I need you to keep yours on for me _and_ for them, okay?" I was going totally soft on her. I would have to wait until shock left Brenda with no alternative. Live or die. Brenda would have to make that choice, and I would push her into making the right one, but she would have to choose between one of them eventually.

"Okay…" Brenda swallowed her tears.

"There you are, Lance Corporal. Now get that sexy ass of yours back up in formation. Oh my God… Carlos is the only one out of formation… I'm gonna fucking kill my number two…" I worked my tired jaw and strode off to murder Carlos on point. Brenda was giggling up a storm as she followed me towards the rest of Echo Squad.

Despite my intents, I did catch myself thinking; it was a genuine pity that Brenda's cute laughter was doomed to die.

…

"And here we are, Echo. The confluence of the M-straight and sector Charlie." I stood back for a moment, and admired the heavy gate barring our way. A pair of Firewatch units stood guard on either side of the gate.

"Firewatch, radio Command. Echo is requesting passage into the Frontier, sector Charlie." I barked to one of the Walkouts standing at attention. While the Firewatch Walkout carried out his duties, I turned around to brief my unit.

"Okay, Echo. This is it. We cross through that Gate, and we won't see another wall until we make Frontier Charlie. There are no Panic Buttons along the way, and if we have to radio for reinforcements, we're gonna be hunkering down for the _long_ wait." My Squad was collectively trembling at the knees.

"Do not make me call in the Aviation Units, Echo. I do not want to end up sitting in the mud waiting for air-support to bail us out. Now the first five-hundred meters should be a breeze, but everything after that is gonna be a nightmare. It is eighteen klicks from our current position to Frontier Charlie. We will cover those eighteen klicks well before the fall of day. We will be proceeding with absolute silence, and complete discretion. And we will not be heading as the Murkrow flies. We are going to have to circumnavigate rough terrain and hostile forces. So I want you all to meet someone very special, because he is going to be the one who'll get us to Frontier Charlie safely." I lifted one of my three pokeballs from my belt.

"Cortez, report." I called out my new hound in flash of white light. My unit's eyes widened even more when they saw my new dog.

"Holy fuck-" Carlos was staggered by the size of that scar.

"This here is Cortez, newly transferred from the Fuschia Military base. He has seen as much action as me, and he is every bit as qualified as me. He is a Hunter-Killer Classification, but he also dual roles as a Pathfinder. High Command could not have given us a more reliable hound. He cannot only sniff out the threats, but Cortez can engage to kill, or plot a course to avoid hostile confrontations. He is our Golden Boy, our compass, our map, our radar, our front line, and our tinder starter. This hound has more accolades than any of you do. I expect nothing but respect for Cortez, because unlike you five… he earned it. And you can tell that just by looking at him." Cortez was absolutely still and silent throughout his introduction. There was something regal about Cortez, yet there wasn't a haughty bone in his body. Cortez just looked at the five Walkouts with those calm, reassuring, mismatched eyes of his.

"Pete, I want Duster out now. That little electric mouse is the quietest thing this unit has other than my own Cortez, and I want that Pikachu on rear guard. Amber, you are right behind Pete and Duster, and keep a close eye on that rodent. He starts acting up, I'm gonna need you to tap Pete's shoulder, and Pete, you tap Erin's. Pass that tap along, Erin. That mouse is no Cortez, but I'll take whatever forewarning the yellow fuck gives us. Brenda is going to be right behind me and Carlos. Erin and Pete, you're on flank. Keep Brenda squeezed nice and tight between you two. I'm not gonna risk losing Echo's medic on day one. Keep your eyes open, and do not shout out alerts. Use the shoulder tap. We will neutralize any hostile contacts as quietly as possible. Stay in formation, follow me and my dog, and trust Carlos and me to handle any minor threats we come across. We will make Frontier Charlie, Echo. _I will not allow you Walkouts to die on the first day of my command._ " I gave them my oath, and a certain degree of their trepidation diminished.

"Has Command granted Echo clearance yet?" I turned around to the Firewatch units standing at attention.

"Command is awaiting Echo Commander's request." The unit reported. I pulled my radio against my chin.

"This is Echo Commander Bastard to Command, we are requesting clearance into sector Charlie, awaiting your approval. Over."

"This is Command to Echo Commander, you are cleared for passage into sector Charlie. Proceed with all haste to Frontier Charlie. Godspeed, Echo. Over."

"We'll take that Godspeed Command, this is Echo Commander Bastard signing off, over and out." I closed the line. The two Firewatch units punched in a code to snap the locks. Command entered their code from their end. The gate popped loose. Both of the Firewatch units pried the door open, before taking positions on either end of the open gate. Raising their salutes, Firewatch bade Echo through the breach.

"Let's get rolling, Echo. Cortez, you have the honor of pole. Ten meters ahead. Get us there safely." I pulled my unit together into a tight knit formation, and I marched them through the breach. We walked into a world that man had lost an eon ago. A world dominated by monsters. A world where nightmares lived. Our world. Echo's world.

The gate closed behind us, and I knew that my Squad was looking back at it in despair and hopelessness. But my eyes were ahead. This was my world. This was my unit. And we were going to carve our home into this world.

…

"Bastard?" Carlos spoke the first word since Echo had entered sector Charlie. We were only three klicks away from Frontier Charlie, and I was none too happy with the breach of silence.

"What is it Corporal?" My voice was low and deadly. Carlos swallowed hard, but something was scaring him even more than me.

"Should I- Should I get Riot out? I mean we're almost there, and I really don't wanna get caught with my pants down in the final stretch-" Carlos was beginning to cry in panic. I tapped him firmly on the cheek.

"Keep your head on, Carlos. For God's sake, we're are almost there. We are well ahead of schedule, and we haven't even needed to enter alert once on this trek. Have some faith in Cortez, this dog is better than even I thought." I shook my head in disbelief. Cortez had found us a wicked fast and safe route. I couldn't wait to call Command early, and tell them that we'd made it to Frontier Charlie without a single hitch.

"...But if I had Riot out-" My hand covered Carlos's mouth in a motion that should have been punctuated by a thunderclap.

"Listen to me, Carlos. We cannot afford to have that big ass out of his ball. Your Siege Class would only make a shit load of noise. Now we've only avoided confrontation this far by keeping stealthy. Do not let Riot out. He'd only endanger us. Save Riot for the fight. He is not a security blanket." I removed my hand. Echo was watching the exchange, worried.

"Erin. What is our current location?" I turned to our Navigation specialist. Erin hadn't said a word since we left the Yard. He could only manage to speak now, after clearing the squeak out of his throat.

"We are less than three klicks east from Frontier Charlie. Currently eighteen klicks north-west from Prime Outpost." Erin reported, after checking our heading on his Tact. Pad. I nodded with a smile.

"You five wouldn't believe me if I told you this… but we are about to set a new record for a Terran-Squad foray into Frontier Charlie. We are currently twenty-six minutes ahead of the previous record. Now stop talking, and start making history, Rangers." Everybody exchanged a glance. While I'm sure that breaking records was a minor concern compared to survival, it nonetheless served as a morale booster. Too bad it wasn't true…

"Cortez." My hound was still waiting for us to cut the noise and make up those ten meters.

"Keep it up, and I'll let you sodomize Amber's Sandshrew when we get to Frontier Charlie." Cortez was simply left unamused, but my Squad wasn't. I heard nervous giggling behind me. Except for Amber, who was still too afraid to say anything but gag.

"Press on, Echo. We're almost home."

I couldn't believe that Echo had actually crossed eighteen klicks of Frontier without a single incident, when the moss-covered walls of Frontier Charlie came into view. This deep Frontier bunker had been abandoned twenty-three years ago, and the only Rangers to have seen it since were the Aviation units from the airborne shoulders of their mounts. The Rangers knew that the structure still stood, but it was Echo's honor to crack open the tomb. A steel gate, covered in age and heavily fortified, barred the way into the inner compound.

"Amber, you're up. Dope the console with some of those power cells." I whispered to our Field-Tech. When Frontier Charlie had been abandoned twenty-three years ago, all power sources had been stowed within the Bunker itself, or removed and relocated off-site. It was a common tactic utilized in areas populated by Electric-Type mon. Pikachus were one of the indigenous species of mon in Viridian, and the aggravating rodents had a reputation for chewing into anything packing an electrical charge. In order to save the circuitry from the Pikachu, all the juice fueling the console had to be quelled before abandonment.

After a jaw grinding five minute wait, Amber got the gate's console up and running. Frontier Charlie may have been ancient before it was abandoned, but it was built out of tech that favored longevity and simplicity over the bleeding-edge security devices of the day. Those bleeding-edge devices would have failed after a few years of neglect. Frontier Charlie's old and crude tech woke up as if it had only gone to sleep yesterday.

"Move aside, Amber. It's gonna want a clearance code." I pushed Amber out of the way, then I unlocked and popped the safety cover off of the console's keypad. All of Echo was shaking with anticipation. These walls meant protection, and everybody was aching for some protection.

 _Where does the sun rise and set, where does the land begin and end?_ Frontier Charlie asked me. I smiled, and punched in the access key.

 _A Mari Usque Ad Mare._

' _...'_

 _Access Granted. Welcome home, Rangers._ The gate popped, and the ancient hinges made an atrocious racket as the way opened up to us. I rallied every member of Echo past the threshold, before pulling the gate shut behind us.

We were in.

"Amber, get the bolt cutters. We gotta snap a chain before we can even get access to the bunker's security console." I order our Field-Tech over towards the the bunker's outer door. Frontier Charlie wasn't much to look at from the inside of the walls. The inner compound was basically a pentagon of five tall concrete walls with a single steel gate, and a half buried circular concrete complex near the rear of the inner sanctum. Weathered fortifications still offered their strength to the walls, and overgrowth dominated everything in between. Old telecom antennas and dishes were clustered together in the south-eastern corner, all of them begging for some dire repairs. The heavy mesh above us was covered in nature's refuse, and several areas had buckled and split. It was part of Echo's mission to reinstate Frontier Charlie, and turn this ragged station into a proper Ranger Outpost.

Amber snapped the chain binding the ancient steel cellar doors shut. I tried the handle. That heavy door didn't even budge with my full strength tugging on it.

"Shit, hinges are probably rusted… Carlos, get Riot out here." I ordered. I was still whispering, even though we were inside Frontier Charlie's walls. Carlos released his Siege Class Rhyhorn; Call sign: _Riot._

"Good to see you again, Riot." I slapped the Rhyhorn on the brow. Riot just grumbled at me. While Carlos had been out on leave, Riot and all the other Siege Class mon had gone into rotation amongst the active Rangers, in order to keep our fighting mon in peak shape and at the battle ready. I had served with Riot countless times in the S-ranked missions, sometimes he was under my command, other times Riot was under a Veteran's authority. Either way, that Rhyhorn knew me, probably even better than he knew Carlos.

I picked up the recently cut chain, and wrapped one end around the bunker's outer door handle.

"Riot, I'm binding this chain around your horn. When I give the order, you give it a small pull. Riot... you have the honors of popping this vintage bunker's cork." I approached Riot with a heft of chain, and tied it around his horn. Stepping back and dusting the rust off of my hands, I gave Riot the room he needed.

"Ready, Riot?"

 _Grumble._ Snorted Riot.

"Give it a tug." Riot lifted his head about half a meter. That was all it took to tighten up the slack in the chain and crack the doors open. Fucking Rhyhorns, man. They are the Ranger's Siege beasts for a reason.

"Well done, Riot. Well done." I chuckled. Carlos made to put Riot back into his ball, but I waved it away.

"No way, Carlos. This is history. Echo, release your mon. We are all going into the bunker together. We are all a part of this history. -Well, except for Darwin, but I ain't waiting for him to flop his fat ass down there." I made a little jab at my own Magikarp, which helped ease the tension. Everybody released their mon into the field, filling Frontier Charlie with the first regiment her walls had held in over twenty years.

Riot, Duster, and Cortez were already deployed, and Vauban joined them before any other mon.

 _Butters,_ Brenda's Medical-Assistant Aipom.

 _Vespucci,_ Erin's Aerial-Reconnaissance Spearow.

 _Whiskers,_ Amber's dildo of a Sandshrew.

I might have felt a twinge of disgust when seeing the Aipom, but I put my prejudice aside, and lifted my radio to my chin; after setting the channel to an open broadcast.

"Hailing all Rangers, this is Echo Squad Commander Zane Bastard. I'm shouting out to the all of the Corps stationed in Viridian to inform you of Echo Squad's acquisition of Frontier Charlie. These are the voices of Echo Squad, hear our finest Walkouts roar-" I passed the radio to a surprised Carlos.

"Uh- This is Corporal Garcia, of the Ranger's Second-Infantry-Battalion. We're staring down into the mouth of Frontier Charlie as we speak-" Carlos looked at me, completely lost for words. I passed the radio onto Erin.

"This is Private Erin Stilts of Echo Squad. We're here. We made it. We made it one piece-" I passed the radio onto Brenda, before Erin's quivering hyperbole drove every Veteran insane.

"We did it! Oh-! I mean- Th-This is Lance Corporal Brenda Eckleson, Medic of Echo Squad. We did it, Colonel! We're here-" I moved the radio over to our Communications Jockey, expecting Pete to give the Rangers a show.

He did not disappoint me.

"This is Private Peter Samuels of Echo! We are balls deep in the Frontier setting up for the long haul! Frontier Charlie will be a monument to all the Ranger's exploits! A haven for all those who dare dream! A-"

"That's enough, Private." I chuckled into the radio as I pulled it away from him.

"Now I wasn't going to do _this-_ But I thought that every Ranger in Viridian should be aware of Echo's greatest sacrifice for the Ranger's cause. Because of Echo, you will now know a peace that has not been known in Viridian for countless years. Because of Echo, you can all sleep easy, knowing that the greatest threat to our Corps has been silenced. No, I'm not talking about our new sanctuary out in the deep. I am not referring to this soon-to-be rekindled Bastion connecting the Frontier to all of you. I am of course, referring to Echo's greatest sacrifice for all you Vets and Walkouts alike… I give you Rangers… The one… The only…" I was grinning like my namesake when I spoke these next words.

" _Warrant Officer Amber Hail!_ " I passed the radio onto Echo Squad's most infamous member.

"Say hello… Amber." I was grinning with every evil intent displayed on my face. Amber swallowed and struggled to find her voice.

"Th-this- This is-" I yanked the radio away from her.

"And that is all you will hear of Warrant Officer Amber Hail's voice for six months. Every other member of Echo deserves the highest honors for making this sacrifice towards preserving your sanity. That is every head of Echo accounted for, Command. Tell the Colonel that we will make him proud. This is Echo's Commanding Officer, Zane Bastard, calling to you all from the inner compound of Frontier Charlie. Over and out." I killed the feed, but left the Radio open to hails. There was a mess of them incoming. Rangers from every corner of Viridian were cheering and whooping for Echo Squad. Me and my Squad stood there in Frontier Charlie's compound, basking in the revelry. Then a priority hail on all channels cut the noise short.

"This is Colonel Isaac Howes of Viridian Prime Outpost. Well done, Echo. Bastard, get them situated. You have all done your Colonel proud. We expect Frontier Charlie to take lead in the Evening Chorus. Remember this day, Rangers. This is the first day in twenty-three years that Frontier Charlie has called out to us with a voice. There are Rangers out in deep again. We are reclaiming what is ours. Give the mon hell, Echo. Colonel Isaac Howes, over and out." The Colonel himself gave Echo his recognition. The Colonel's address was followed by a new wave of cheers coming through on my radio.

"That is for _us,_ Echo… Now tell me… If you dare… Tell me that it isn't worth it." I beamed at every member of my unit. There were tears in Carlos's eyes as well as Brenda's. Nobody could speak. All of Echo was feeling completely overwhelmed.

"Amber, boot up the security console. Passphrase is, ' _A Mari Usque Ad Mare.'_ We've got lots of work ahead of us, Rangers. Let's get started." I followed my command up with a reminder of our mission.

"Cortez, when we get down there, your ass is on R&R. You fucking earned it, dog. I've never seen a Pathfinder half as good as you." I smiled at my weary hound, but Cortez seemed as stoic as ever.

"Security console online, Bastard. Frontier Charlie is telling us to come in." Amber reported, and her voice carried absolute relief. All of Echo moved forward in a rush, but I halted them with a raised arm.

"Hold up." I ordered. Every member froze, and a look of trepidation began to infect their collective visages. I smiled, and turned to Cortez.

"Cortez got us here in one piece. Cortez led us through eighteen klicks of Frontier without a single alert being called. Just as he led us here, Cortez is going to lead the rest of Echo into Frontier Charlie." I stood aside and put Cortez in the spotlight. For the first time since I'd met him, Cortez faltered. I smiled warmly at my dog.

"The honor is yours, Cortez." I raised a salute to my own hound, and all of Echo raised theirs with me. Cortez began to quiver. A desperate look shone in his eyes, before he managed to conquer it.

There is something deep to Cortez. There is something deep down to my dog... And I am going to dig it up.

Cortez straightened himself out, before turning to me and sitting down. That was our signal. Cortez had returned Echo's salute.

"Get going, dog. Time's a wastin." I barked. Cortez stood back up, and took his slow steps down into the bunker, with me right on his heels, and Echo Squad at our shadow.

…

"Wow." I chuckled as soon as the old lights flickered on. The bunker's inner door sealed behind us, and all of Echo got the first look at our new home. The ceremony was over. Only Cortez remained out of his pokeball.

"I knew that it was gonna be a shithole… but damn…" I snorted as I kicked up an inch of dust from the floor. A narrow hallway, just wide enough for four abreast, led down into the bunker. The walls were bare concrete, and the light fixtures were exposed bulbs and cables. Frontier Charlie felt more like a catacomb than an Outpost.

"I hope she looks prettier further on." I started walking down that hallway. A couple of doorways partitioned the walls, leading into tiny chambers. Plaques above the doorframes indicated their purposes.

"Utility, Dry Storage, Armory, Forward Observation, Ordnance…" I stopped dead when I saw that last plaque. I almost kicked down the door to the Ordnance locker in my haste to get in there.

"Damn it." The cupboard was bare. Not a single toy of destruction greeted me when I opened that door. I could hear all of Echo breathing a sigh of relief. Part of my scary reputation was established in accordance to my role as a Sapper. Viridian would be relegating the horror stories of the Fucking Bastard's explosive exploits for decades to come.

"Armory is mostly stocked. Dry Storage has coats on pegs!" Erin reported.

"Standard procedure… They must have disposed of all the Ordnance when they bailed it out of here." I grumbled.

"Holy crap! There's an ashtray with half a cigarette left in it!" Carlos's voice hollered from Forward Observation.

"Dude, this desk still has pens and requisition sheets in it! This place looks like it was sealed yesterday! Well, I mean... apart from all the dust..." Carlos sounded awed. I turned to my Squad with a disgusted look on my face.

"Don't tell me you Walkouts have never heard the story behind Frontier Charlie?" I was growling now. Every head turned to me, looks of shock worn open and plainly. I sighed in exasperation.

"Frontier Charlie is the deepest fortified Outpost the Rangers have in the Viridian Frontier. Twenty-three years back, there was a freak occurrence regarding an outbreak of Wheezing. A group of Koffing found a crack in an old Pre-Brink hazardous waste storage facility. A big facility. Detaining some mighty scary ink. You all should know what happens when the Pollutants find Pre-Brink waste, and the dirtier the waste, the bigger the bloom. The Koffing started multiplying and evolving at a scale not seen since the Brink Collapse itself, and Viridian was overrun by the smog-breathers of death." I paused to gauge my audience. My Rangers were hanging onto every word.

"Command ordered a Total Recall, and requested aid from every other Ranger Division in both the Kanto and Johto regions. Total Recall. Drop everything and converge at Prime Outpost. Everybody drop everything and retreat… except for Frontier Charlie." All of Echo had stopped breathing. I was just beginning to realize the morbid irony in our being here.

"Frontier Charlie was the only Outpost not affected by the Total Recall. They needed more time to prepare, because Colonel Howes had a very important mission for the Rangers stationed here. You see, that waste facility? It's only four klicks west from our current position." I breathed deeply, and released all that wind in a sigh.

"The last Squad to possess the designation 'Echo...' They made their last stand outside of these walls." Every throat moved with a swallow.

"It was a suicide mission, and all of Echo knew it. But they were the only ones in a position to stop the calamity from spreading. Most of Echo perished at Frontier Charlie's outer perimeter. The Rangers never even found their bodies… but the survivors of Echo pressed on. The last member of Echo died sealing that Pre-Brink waste facility. And after the hit the Rangers took defending Viridian from the Wheezing… Colonel Howes didn't have enough men left to warrant a garrison at Frontier Charlie. So he sealed it up, and left every unnecessary thing behind, exactly as it was. To serve as a memento to the Rangers who died to save Viridian. Frontier Charlie. We are standing in a hall of ghosts, Echo… The ghosts of our predecessors…" I could feel a chill on my own neck as I relayed the tale. Everyone had gone dead silent. The bunker felt like a proper tomb now.

"They never found the bodies?" Brenda spoke first. I just chuckled.

"Bren, I'm sure that there was nothing left of their bodies to bury. Wheezing are fucking nasty, and those fucked up mon probably liquified the remains. You don't have to worry about a skeleton crawling into bed with you-" Brenda involuntarily shuddered. That got me and the rest Echo laughing.

"It's not funny…" Brenda moaned, holding herself fearfully.

"Yes it is, Bren. We got a world of human-hunting, man-eating monsters just one-hundred meters beyond that door, and you're worried about Ghosts? Come on, Brenda… We aren't stationed in Lavender Town."

"Thank God…" Carlos shuddered. The new train of conversation sparked a curiosity in some of our newest Rangers.

"Is it true that Lavender Town plays host to Blackhat Team Three's HQ just because of Memorial Tower?" Erin asked. I got another chuckle out of that.

"Blackhat Team Three is the Ghost-Hunting Division, Erin. Why do you think that they're stationed in Lavender Town?" I mocked.

"Yeah, count your lucky stars, Rangers. I'll take the Beedrill and the Nidoking over the Gengar and the Banettes any day. Ghosts will fuck you up in ways far worse than any other mon out there… -And they'll do it _real_ slowly..." I gave my Squad the most sinister ghostly grin to accompany that revelation. But even so, not everyone was grateful with our current station.

"...What if Echo Squad's Ghosts are still here?" Brenda whispered. I felt ice running down my back and legs despite myself. Everybody else looked at Brenda like she had just invited Bad-Juju into Frontier Charlie. I needed to settle this now.

"I'm gonna be straight with you, Bren. There is no evidence whatsoever that supports the superstition of man becoming… something else after death. I do not believe for one second that the Ghosts were once human. There is nothing human in the Ghosts. There is absolutely nothing natural about them. So I stand by what I said before. You're more than likely to wake up with Pete crawling into bed with you, than you are with a skeleton." I put on my best smirk.

"Eww…" Brenda looked at poor little Pete in disgust. The following laughter shook the heebie-jeebies away.

"Come on Echo, first things first. I want a thorough once over of Frontier Charlie, just to make sure that all of the old tech is still functional." I pressed on further into the bunker, with my Squad in pursuit.

…

We came into the center compound, and Frontier Charlie's haunting air greeted us in the Ready Room. The longtable still had dirty plates and mugs on it, and reports detailing the events of twenty-three years ago. One of the chairs at the longtable was ajar and facing us when we entered. I almost expected a Ranger's shade to be sitting on that chair when Echo stepped into the Ready Room. Something below my feet caught my eye. I knelt down, and dusted the floor off. A ruddy discoloration was hidden beneath the soil. I froze when I uncovered what was concealed there.

A trail of bloody boot prints, dried to this floor twenty-three years ago.

"Okay, Carlos! You and Erin are on swab detail. I want this entire bunker looking spiffy. Brenda, setup Sickbay. I want it sterile, and I want all the old disposable resources thrown away. Do not use a tongue depressor that is older than you are. Amber, Pete! I want Pete down in the Comm room fiddling with the dials, and Amber, you're outside digging through the guts of Frontier Charlie's old Comm relay. I want a radio fix with Command, and I want it fast. Write up any parts that need to be replaced on the relay, Field-Tech. I will add them to my manifest and send Command the requisition." I barked out the first set of orders these halls had heard since before my own birth. All of Echo started scrabbling to abide by my decree.

Well… All of Echo, except-

"Bastard?" I rolled my jaw and eyes as turned around to face my nemesis.

"What is it, Field-Tech?" I grumbled over Amber's fretting.

"Am I going out there alone?" Amber was fiddling with her hands. My eyes fell on her nervous behavior with heavy notes of disdain.

"No, you are permitted to bring Whiskers with you." I stated the obvious. Amber shuddered.

"Is there a problem, Field-Tech?" I growled. Amber swallowed.

"It's just that… There are some pretty big holes in the mesh… I don't want to get stung by any Beedrill that manage to squeeze through…" Amber was wringing her hands now.

"Fair enough. I'll give you some advice then." I smiled my evil smile.

"Stay quiet, keep Whiskers on lookout, work fast and _properly…_ And I'll let you sleep inside tonight." Carlos, Erin, and Pete all froze. They were looking at me with a new sense of dread. Amber was tearing up. The Fucking Bastard faced all of them with his cold-ass demeanor.

"I believe that I just gave each and every one of you a duty, Echo. Now I expect-" Something darted past my legs, whipping my boot laces into a tizzy.

"BUTTERS!" I roared that stupid monkey's name at the top of my range.

"-Butters, get back here!" Brenda came charging out of Sickbay, looking for her mon. She was gonna find a lot more than that from me.

"Brenda, get this piece of shit monkey out of my Ready Room. Now." I growled. Brenda quickly made to collect the disobedient Butters, who was poking a napping Cortez in the the scar.

"Butters, come on. Let's get-" Brenda was using kiddy-talk to speak to her mon, and I found myself growing livid.

"Butters. Front and center. Right. Fucking. Now." My hate filled voice was in full pitch. Butters had stirred Cortez from his well-earned sleep. I knew that the dog was watching me give orders before Butters had shown up, but he had closed his eyes when the monkey had entered the Ready Room. Butters looked up at me with a stupid smile on his face, completely ignoring my order. I froze up tight. I couldn't believe it. Butters was not responding to my command. This service mon had forgotten its discipline.

"Brenda… How have you been caring for your mon?" I rounded on Brenda with a rather suspicious and dangerous voice simmering in the air. Brenda swallowed.

"He's just a Medical-Assistant… He doesn't need-" My open palm silenced Brenda's snivelling with a loud crack. All of Echo froze. Even Butters locked up when I struck his Commanding Officer.

"Let me get this straight… You let your service mon soften up?" I glared into Brenda's watering eyes. Her face was turning red around the swelling white handprint that I'd left her with.

"Oh no… I see it now." My face was as animated as my voice. Livid as fuck.

"You actually pandered to your little monkey, didn't you?" I hissed, spit flying from my clenched teeth. Brenda began to shake and cry.

"Butters. Get on my position, -RIGHT FUCKING NOW!" I ordered that shit-fucked monkey to my toes. A very nervous Butters sat his ass down before Echo's Commanding Officer. I glared down at the Aipom, displaying every unrestrained ounce of hatred that I possessed for mon and monkey-mon alike.

"Watch, Brenda. This is how Rangers train their service mon." I whispered to my medic. Then I fell on Butters, both fists flying. That monkey squealed as I beat his head into the concrete. He even tried to defend himself. Too bad for his spindly forearms, they couldn't resist my fury. When I was done making finger paint out of Butter's face, I flogged the fuck out of his torso and arms. I was going further than I needed too, but had to set the standards. When Butters was reduced to a wheezing mound of blood and bruises, I lifted myself off of the Ready Room's dirty floor, and kicked Butter's crotch for good measure. The monkey was making an unnatural sound. A sound that every living creature had the capacity to replicate. A moan that was only ever uttered in mindless agony and total despair. Nobody in that room had ever heard that sound before. Nobody, but me.

"You get this piece of shit monkey in your Sickbay, Lance Corporal, and he will stay in your Sickbay for the entirety of our sixth months stationed at Frontier Charlie. He is not to leave Sickbay, unless first confined in his pokeball. _You_ will keep him in Sickbay, Lance Corporal… Or I will _put_ him there…" Brenda was crying up a river, both hands covering her gasping mouth. Amber had tears running down both of her cheeks; and even Carlos, Pete, and Erin were red eyed and pale.

I glowered at everyone of them.

"YOU HAVE YOUR ORDERS, ECHO! NOW CARRY THEM OUT!" I roared. My Squad jumped, but their discipline wasn't sharp enough to overcome the pity and the shock. They couldn't remove themselves from this scene. My Walkouts were far from being Rangers yet. I had a _long way_ to go with them.

"Echo… If I have to repeat-" My deadly intonation was interrupted as Cortez pushed his way between me and Brenda. I looked down at my dog in shock. Cortez pushed Brenda back up with the rest of Echo, before he turned around and put those two calm eyes on me. Cortez, standing between me, and my unit.

"What is the meaning of this, Cortez?" I growled. Cortez lifted his right paw, and held it steady for two seconds, before dropping it.

That's Pathfinder for, ' _Negative.'_

"Is there a problem, Cortez?" I growled at my dog. Cortez swelled and silently sighed, before he sat down on his haunches, facing me.

Pathfinder for, ' _That way.'_

I locked up. I couldn't believe it. Cortez had turned on me, his Commanding Officer. There was no discipline left in my unit. Day one, and I was already looking at a mutiny.

"Oh, you gone and fucked up now, dog…" I breathed out a whisper of dire intentions and utter disbelief. Cortez was unshaken.

"Cortez, you are dismissed." I lifted his pokeball, and recalled Cortez into its confines with a beam of red light.

"Rangers…" I addressed my paralysed unit with a calm voice.

"You have your orders. I suggest that you follow them to the letter, or you will all be sleeping outside tonight. Dismissed." Everybody moved now. Amber fucking ran for the bunker's exit, while Carlos and Erin hastily staggered off towards the Utilities room for a bucket and a mop. Pete dashed off towards the Comm Room, and a sobbing Brenda knelt down to scoop up her broken Butters.

Brenda lifted Butters off of the floor, cradling that sick little monkey like her own child. Then I saw Butters reaching out for Brenda, just to wipe away her tears, and my heart jumped into my throat.

 _Vauban…_

I tore that monkey out of Brenda's arms with a violent jerk, and slammed Butter's ass down onto the concrete floor. Brenda looked at me, completely shattered. I gritted my teeth thoroughly before I spoke.

"On your feet, Butters." The monkey twitched, but after a second, he complied to my command. Even after Brenda's meddling affections, Butters could still remember that he was a service mon.

"Now Brenda… You _walk_ his ass back to Sickbay. I don't ever want to see that again." My voice was so low that I had to strain my larynx to be heard. Brenda straightened out, facing her Commanding Officer with a stiff and steady stance.

"Butters." Brenda's voice intoned a command. That panting monkey's hollow eyes went dead. Brenda's face began to quiver, as a fresh batch of tears pooled in her eyes.

"To the Sickbay." Brenda sobbed, cracking.

I watched the two of them go, Brenda shaking and Butters limping. Separate, but one unit. A Ranger, and a Ranger's mon. I waited until they had both faded away down the Sickbay corridor, and then I turned on my own heel, and stalked off to the Commander's Quarters.

…

I threw open the door to my office and private quarters. I stomped right in and slammed the door behind me. Everything within was covered in sheets. It must have been the only room in entire facility to have received the preservation treatment.

I barely noticed.

"Cortez, report." I lifted my disobedient mutt's pokeball, and summoned him directly in front of me.

Cortez hadn't even fully materialized before I slugged him in his ugly fucking face.

"What the fuck are you doing, Cortez?" My voice was lethally engaged with Cortez's ears. The dog's only indication that he had even been struck was the jerk of his head when my blow landed. Cortez stared at me with that lonely purple eye, weary and seemingly unconcerned.

"I should gut your ass for what you just pulled. What the hell are you trying to tell me, Cortez?" I growled. Cortez straightened his head out, and added a green eye to his leveled stare. He looked up at me with subtle disgust. I knew why Cortez had intervened.

Cortez thought that I was in the wrong.

"You used to be the best… I get it now. The Military couldn't find a CO that you would obey, could they?" I chuckled, but my mirth was far from funny. It was degrading.

"You're going to learn something, Cortez… This ain't the Military. This isn't months of boredom and minutes of terror. This is the real fight. We are always engaged. We are always unsupported. We are always alone. This is the Ranger Corps, and you either harden up… Or you die." I hissed that warning. Cortez just sighed at me, and shook his head.

I laid his ass on the floor for it.

"Get your ugly ass up, dog. I am not finished with you." Cortez got back onto his feet, blood oozing from his snout. Still unshaken.

"Everything I just told you applies to every Ranger who serves in the Corps. Every Ranger, including those washed-out Walkouts scurrying to satisfy my command. I have to harden them up, Cortez. I have to keep them alive. Now this is your only warning. If you ever try to stage a mutiny again-" Cortez didn't let me finish. That fucking dog leapt up and bit his Commanding Officer on the hand. I threw him off, and stared in wild disbelief at the calm hound sitting before me. No way. You didn't just do that.

It took a moment for me to come to my senses, but when I did...

Cortez was getting his turn in Butters's former place. I was wailing on that dog with a furious gusto. He never cried out. He never fought back. My fists connecting with his face couldn't close those calm eyes. I was screaming in rage when I whipped out my knife. Cortez didn't even flinch as the blade was raised above my head. He just looked at me, with those all-seeing eyes of his. I froze... And I fell back. Cortez was just watching me. Cortez was just waiting for me. Just waiting for me to kill him. I took a minute's worth of deep breathes. I was shaking and sweating, pouring rank murder from every pore. I looked down to my hand, and saw Cortez's bite wound bleeding profusely.

Why didn't I just kill him?

I looked back at that beaten hound, and what I saw wasn't beaten. It was defiance, reserved and controlled defiance. Cortez was telling me with a look. Cortez was making it perfectly clear. Cortez was pulling down my every shadow of a doubt.

Cortez would rather die, than serve under me.

Why.

Didn't.

I.

Just.

Kill.

Him?

I knew why. It struck me like an epiphany right then and there. There was a reason why I didn't gut Cortez. There was a motivation behind my inaction. There was a desire of mine that needed to be fulfilled.

I desired this dog's respect.

My knife found its way into its sheath. I pulled my Spec. Ops Bandana off my right bicep, and wrapped it tight around my bleeding hand.

"On your feet, Cortez." My voice was spent, hollow. I stared off into the far corner, refusing to meet that dog's wise eyes as he slowly rose to a sitting position. I struggled to work up the nerve to face that dog again. When I finally could, my voice was choked.

"You know something, Cortez… You and I are going to come to an understanding… And you and I are going to realize that. Right now…" Cortez swallowed. I turned on a heel, and marched out of my office.

"Follow me, Cortez." I growled. That dog hauled ass to catch up.

…

"Brenda, pack yourself a field kit, and meet me in the Armory. You have eight minutes, Ranger. Get to it." I stormed into the Sickbay with that iron declaration, startling Brenda as she administered to a gauze enshrouded Butters. Then I was gone before she could even draw a breath for a question.

"Pete, ass in the yard. Eight minutes. Full battle tack, Radio Operator. Get a hustle on." I barked into the Comm room, making the scrawny Private jump out of his skin. I was out of that room before he had even turned around.

"Carlos! Erin! Drop those mops and suit up for the field. Full combat raiments. Carlos, prep your fucking Siege Class for a skirmish." I stomped right past the two nervous Walkouts in the Ready Room without pausing to glance at either one of them. Cortez was having to run to keep up with my furious march. I hauled open the Armory's door, and began to suit up in the hard kit. Carlos, Erin, Pete, and Brenda poured in behind me. They were scared shitless, but not because of my orders, or even the call to the Armory.

They were terrified of the Fucking Bastard.

I packed a second kit, and hoofed it out of the Armory while they were still strapping up. I blew the dust off of my antique body armor with a hot and heavy breath. Then I threw open the doors of the bunker, and made my way over towards Frontier Charlie's relay.

"I'm working as fast as I can-!" Amber started panicking as soon as she saw my dreadful figure approaching.

Cortez was right. This was no way for the Bastard run his outfit.

"Suit up, Warrant Officer Hail." I tossed down the battle wrap I'd prepped for her down in the Armory. Amber froze when she saw the hard kit.

"What are we doing?" Amber whimpered, noticing that I too, was wearing the combat trappings.

"We are going out into the Frontier. Suit up for a field exercise, Warrant Officer." Amber looked like she was gonna faint. But she was too afraid of me to offer any further questioning of my orders. The rest of Echo Squad was coming out of the bunker, garbed in their hard kit.

"ECHO SQUAD! FALL IN!" I roared as soon as Amber tightened up the last strap on her harness. Every member of Echo Squad formed up as quickly as they could. They were all shaking, scared beyond their wits. I took my place before them in the descending light of the sun. Cortez parked his ass next to me, and together we stood as the head of Echo.

My unit could see it now. Cortez, battered to all hell. The blood dripping from my hand and into the soil. The cool, reserved expression shared by me and my dog.

"Cortez and I had a little talk." I only started speaking after Echo had a chance to drink it all in.

"It seems that Cortez doesn't approve of my leadership skills." I informed them of the obvious. But the punchline was coming in hard.

"And I agree with him." I said it in the same displeased voice that I'd used to refer to the various Walkouts of Echo all damn day. Everybody kept their composure.

Good on you, Echo.

"So I'm going to try something different." I smirked, and a look of horror overcame my unit. You're catching on, Echo.

You're catching on…

"Rather than just trying to scare you all into understanding the reason of our being here, I am instead going to educate you. You may be scared of me, but you don't rightly fear what I fear. So to impress upon you the urgency of our commitment to one another…" My big ol' smile was making goosebumps swell in spite of the summer's heat.

"Cortez and I are going to take you five Head-hunting. We are taking down some big game, Echo, and Cortez and I are going to show you how it's done." Erin staggered. Pete keeled over and vomited. Amber finally fainted. Carlos caught her before she hit the ground, though his face was turning green. Brenda dropped her field kit from numb arms, and then fell onto her ass, clutching her head and sobbing.

"Now I know that you are all scared." I continued casually when Amber blinked herself back into consciousness.

"And you have no reason to be scared." My voice dropped to the absolute depth of my range. Brenda started sobbing louder.

"Cortez, shake her out of it." I ordered my hound to Brenda's side. Cortez complied with my command, and nudged Brenda's face out of her hands, licking her tears away.

"Everybody listening?" I asked when the sobbing had quieted. Pete was leaning on Erin, clutching his gut. Pale Carlos was standing at attention, while Amber just drooped beside him. Everytime Brenda tried to opened her mouth to sob, Cortez's rough tongue lapped at her lips, silencing her.

"You are afraid, Echo, because you have no faith in yourselves or each other." I spoke gently for the first time since uttering the Epitaph back in Prime Outpost's Yard, earlier this morning.

"And I have given _you_ nothing to have faith in." Brenda looked up at me. All of Echo's eyes mirrored her gaze to mine.

"So now we are going to go out there and find some faith. You will learn what it means to be a Ranger. You will come to appreciate the bonds of that Brotherhood. And you will find a strength within yourselves when you find a strength in one another." I closed my speech, and straightened my form.

"Cortez, report to my side. Echo, on your feet. Battle formation. Just stay silent, and follow my lead." I turned around and marched myself and Cortez to the gate. My unit hesitated to follow me.

"You can follow my orders, Echo… Or you can find out the hard way what happens when my orders are no longer given…" Make the choice, Echo.

You have to make a choice.

There was a pause, and for a moment, I feared that Echo had made the wrong choice. Then Carlos stepped forward. Pete nearly jumped to follow him. Erin slowly lifted Brenda to her feet, and led himself and the willing Brenda to the rest of Echo waiting at the gate. Only Amber stood behind, locked in place.

"You're all gonna die…" Amber gasped when she looked at the calm unit forming under my shadow. I gave Amber the only true smile I had ever shown her. My real smile. A sad smile.

"Rangers die everyday, Amber. They die alone, more often than not. Very few of us are lucky enough to be deployed in Squads, with fellow Rangers at our backs. Very few of us are shown that mercey. So how do you want to die, Ranger?" A voice that Zane Bastard never used was revealed to those five Rangers. A part of him reached out to comfort them in this trial. Even Amber felt it. She took several steadying breaths, before running over to take her place in our formation.

"Very good, Rangers. That was the easy part. Now you all need to be ready for the hard part." Zane Bastard was still speaking in that voice, a voice silenced the very day a Beret had been placed upon his head. The voice that belonged to the boy, who would one day become the Fucking Bastard.

…

"Cortez, sniff me out a big one." I ordered my Hunter-Killer to fulfil his role. Cortez didn't waste another moment. He immediately began sniffing out the Frontier.

"Are we really going to do this, Bastard?" Carlos murmured at my shoulder. I smiled at him with the jester's smirk. The Fucking Bastard was back in the seat.

"You better believe it, Carlos. I'll show you five Greenbacks what the Vets showed me. And then I'll show you what _I showed them._ " Cocky Bastard was inspiring his Echo with all his conceited banter. Everybody straighten up just a little bit more.

Confidence. It was what I'd been missing before.

I needed to have confidence in them.

Cortez stopped sniffing, and raised his right paw, before flicking it twice and lowering it.

 _Affirmative._ My Hunter-Killer had found something.

"Where is it at, Cortez?" I asked. Cortez pivoted east and then pointedly sat down.

"Bingo. Ten meters ahead on pole, Cortez. Let's go bag us a Tango." Cortez stood up and put his ten meters lead down, and Echo made to follow him.

"So Erin?" I spoke at a normal volume, casually ignoring the Frontier's rules. Cortez would let me know the instant a threat was detected. For now I could entertain conversation with my unit.

"Yes, sir?" Erin asked nervously.

"Vespucci?" I asked. Erin looked at me, confused.

"Your Spearow's name is Vespucci. I take it that you're a cartographer?" I asked.

"...Yeah. How did you-?"

"Come on Erin, don't let the Beret fool you. I'm a history buff. I know who Amerigo Vespucci was." I answered.

"Not a bad name for a Spearow. Quaint, not too obvious. Much better than Marco Polo." I joked. The conversation was easing the tension. I trusted Cortez to afford us this luxury, and that trust gave my unit some peace of mind.

"Listen Erin, I got a mission for you." I was still talking in that friendly authoritative voice.

"I'm all ears, sir." Erin sounded nervous. I just started chuckling.

"Our intel on sector Charlie is as dated as our bunker. I'm putting in a requisition for an aerial-reconnaissance camera and a matching harness. I want you and Vespucci to draw up some new maps for Command. I want waterways, treelines, topography, landmarks, the whole Goddamn shooting match on paper. And I want both yours and Vespucci's signature on those maps when I turn them into Command." I informed our Navigations specialist. I don't think that Erin could have been anymore delighted by my request. It was a good and timely place to wrap it up. Cortez was giving us a warning.

Cortez's tail lifted, and the hound froze with his right front paw raised. Echo immediately cut the chatter.

We were close. To close to be talking.

"Okay Cortez, take it slow. Fall back to me, and lead us there." I whispered the order to my dog, and Cortez fell back to my side.

"Alright, Carlos. Get your finger near Riot's trigger. If shit hits us before we hit them, introduce them to your Siege Class." I whispered. Carlos swallowed and shifted his gear, so that Riot's pokeball was easily obtainable.

"Echo, draw your knives. Everybody be silent, alert, and _ready._ " I spoke quietly, my voice firm. I heard the sound of five other knives being drawn as I drew mine.

"Lead on, Cortez, take us to the beast." I said to the hound at my side.

Cortez found us a winner, alright. I couldn't have hoped for a better mark in a more favorable situation.

"Snoozing Nidoqueen. Just fit for bursting." I grinned to Carlos. He was trembling something fierce. It probably had something to do with his proximity to a Delta-Three. The Nidoqueen was all of twenty meters away, napping her pregnant ass in a sunlit glade.

"Good job, Cortez. We have the field. Now let's make a play. Carlos-" I whispered.

"What?"

"When you see my signal, release Riot." I held my knife above my head, and flicked the blade twice.

"That's our signal. Tell Riot to charge my ass." Carlos balked.

"Charge you-?"

"Carlos, trust me, Riot and I have done this before. I want you to stay back here with the rest of Echo, and cover them _if something goes wrong._ Do you understand me, Number two?" I whispered urgently, trying to get Carlos to ground himself despite my peculiar request.

"Yes, sir." Carlos answered.

"Good. Now the rest of you... You are to watch my every move. I'm gonna solo this one, so that you understand how this form of engagement works. Cortez-" My dog looked up at me.

"Circle around the bitch. You have forty-five seconds to get into position. When you see my knife waving in the bushes over here, engage the Tango. Shake her up, get her attention off of me. You are to distract, Cortez. Do not get hurt fighting something bigger than you are." I laid it out for my hound. Cortez raised his right paw, and gave me the _affirmative_ signal.

"Okay, Cortez get into position. Carlos, standby with Riot. Go." Cortez slunk off into the shrubs, staying well and true to my request for discretion in his advance.

"Erin, start a silent countdown. Give me the signal when you reach forty-five." Erin immediately began ticking his head in time with his count. I was keeping my own, but I needed my Rangers involved in this.

"Come on Cortez. Forty-five seconds should be plenty of time to get into position." I was halfway down my count. Every member of Echo was silently counting with me. I could see them tapping their fingers on the dirt in time with the T-minus.

Good. My Echo had found it.

Erin gave me the thumbs up, and I waved my knife from above our cover. A sharp bark answered it. Cortez was starting his distraction. I had to give it some time. The Nidoqueen needed to commit to the pooch attacking her. I peered out through the bushes and saw the bitch getting onto her feet. She was a pretty impressive Nidoqueen. More than two meters tall. Round from a belly load of baby Nidos. Well fed and healthy.

A good kill.

She was none too happy about being woken up by the tiny Growlithe snapping at her knees. The Nidoqueen let out a bellow. Her warning meant that Cortez better get the fuck out of town before she started a business on his ass. But Cortez was a Ranger, and we don't take to idle threats. Cortez shot a fucking gout of flames into her face, and that flare was even bigger than the dog spitting it.

Oh yeah, Cortez. That'll piss her the fuck off.

The Nidoqueen was invested now. This little pooch was gonna die. No woman likes having their facial hairs set aflame, and this Nidoqueen was no exception. She got real quiet and stomped her feet. She was gonna start charging soon.

That was my que.

I left the cover of the bushes, knife lowered at my side. Cortez saw me coming, and hit the extra aggressive switch. He was full on attacking the bitch, drawing her ire onto him and him alone. I had to cover at least ten meters before I gave Carlos the signal. I was halfway to the fight when I started yelling, shocking the bitch into looking at me. Cortez punished her for it, taking a chunk out her leg for ignoring him. The Nidoqueen didn't give a shit about the loud human approaching her. In her eyes, I was just making a lot of noise with no show to back it up. The Growlithe was the real problem. Or so she thought.

Still yelling, I gave Carlos the signal. Not even two seconds later, I heard Riot blast out of the brush, horn lowered at my ass. Cortez picked it up another notch, blasting the Nidoqueen with flames, pissing her off something fierce. Riot was almost on me and gaining speed. I hunkered down and reached out with my spare arm.

Riot's horn found my palm, and I used both the horn and Riot's momentum as a pivot to pull myself up against Riot's head. I was hanging off of that charging Rhyhorn with my feet planted firmly on his jaw. Riot was moving faster than I could, and by the time the Nidoqueen felt the rumble in the earth, we were right on top of her.

She looked up too fucking late.

I let go of Riot right before he slammed into her. I rolled to my feet in a one swift motion, and ran straight for the toppled bitch. Riot's charge had knocked the Nidoqueen to the ground. And my knife work was going to keep her there.

Just as the bitch pulled herself onto her toes and claws, my knife was slicing through both of her Achilles tendons with a pair of heavy-handed hacks. She let out a scream that almost sounded human.

Don't bother trying to get up.

Riot is coming back for round two.

Crippling the Nidoqueen had bought Riot the necessary time to build up the distance and speed required for a full-breaching charge, and my nifty cuts gave _me_ the time to get the hell outta the way.

Riot came back at a thunderous pace. Getting his horn right up underneath the Nidoqueen's shoulder, Riot dug into her and found the required leverage. His combined speed, mass, and angle of approach provided sufficient force to send the bitch flying. She hadn't even peaked in her ascent before I was running over towards her LZ. The Nidoqueen smashed into the ground on her back, winded and stunned.

And that is just how she died.

My knife sank into the soft flesh above her right collar, and I dragged my razor across her throat to the opposite collar. I followed that red line up with one quick stab to the open larynx, and the deed was done.

Nidoqueen: 0

Rangers: 1

Game over.

Riot approached me with Cortez in tow. I wiped my knife off in the grass, while the Nidoqueen thrashed and bled to death behind me. A flawless execution, yet again.

Just another day in the Rangers for the Fucking Bastard.

"Good job, boys." I punched Riot in between his eyes, and he gave me a thwack on the hip for it with his rock-hard face. Fair is fair.

"Nicely done, Cortez. You can be my wingman, anytime." I rustled Cortez's shoulders roughly, grateful that this Hunter-Killer was a performance mon as well.

"Echo! Come on out." I called to my Squad, who were still hunkered down in the bushes. Five very pale Rangers hesitantly rose from their cover.

"Come on now, the bitch is almost dead." I grumbled, sheathing my knife. The Nidoqueen was gurgling on the ground behind me. She had roughly twenty more seconds to choke before her lungs finished filling with blood and finally drowned her.

Short, staggered steps brought my Echo to the front. The bitch was gagging her last when they finally made it to my position.

"And that is how a Ranger kills a Nidoqueen." I smiled at my unit. Everybody was stony faced and quiet. I just snorted. Once they got past the shock, Echo might find some of that faith I had been rambling on about earlier.

"Carlos, whip out the Tang. We're gonna barbecue this broad so that her corpse doesn't bring anymore predators into sector Charlie." Carlos swallowed, and fished through his kit for a canister of aerosol-dispensed-napalm, or 'Tang' as the Rangers liked to called it.

"No, not yet, dummy! Wait till she squeezes it all out." My grumpy voice stopped Carlos from prematurely tagging the bitch with Tang.

"...Squeezes?" Carlos asked. As if on cue, the Nidoqueen pinched a heavy pile of nasty right onto the ground between her legs.

"Goddamn, that bitch smells foul!" I hollered, waving a hand in front of my nose. Everyone else was gagging.

"Can I do it now, sir?!" Carlos was begging for the light up through a pinched nose. I shook my head.

"Wait for the rest of it." I grumbled. Carlos looked at me in disbelief.

"There's more coming?" Carlos whimpered.

Well she was pregnant, wasn't she?

The reek of birth mingled with the stench of excrement as the litter of Nido pups oozed out into their mother's feces. They were only a couple weeks away from being properly born. Almost fully developed. They were far enough along now to live for a few hours after their mother's death.

Small squeaks and clicks were being gasped out by the doomed Nido pups. Their closed eyes and delicate pink bodies were the hallmark of any newborn mammalian predator. The males were easy to tell apart from the females. All you had to do was look for the cap. Male Nidoran pups had a small round cap over their horn, an evolutionary measure designed to prevent them from damaging the mother or the other pups in the womb. Normally, that cap fell off two hours after birth.

None of the pups were going to last that long.

Echo was not ready for this. This was the hard part that I had warned them about. This was the Ranger part. The cruel part. I don't rightly know if mankind is an inherently empathetic species, but my Squad's reaction to the premature birth definitely supported the argument. Pete and Erin were alternately chewing on their nails and gaping, just as both Amber and Brenda were covering their mouths in watery-eyed horror. I suppose that it was understandable. Witnessing the feeble infants clabbering over one another in their mother's excrement probably wasn't going to make any healthy memories for my Walkouts. Out of all of Echo, only Carlos maintained his composure. Carlos might have looked sickly, but his training in the Infantry had prepared him for this. He alone knew what my next order would be. I was about to make one more macabre memory for this positively traumatizing day.

"Alright Carlos, toss me some Tang." I deftly caught the projectile canister, and then turned around to douse the Nidoqueen and her leavings.

"Put a heavy dose on the pups. They have a tendency to try running off when they light up." I instructed Carlos as I started spraying the bitch's head.

"NO! DON'T!" Brenda was pulling on my arm, crying her eyes out again. I'd seen this coming a klick away.

"Bren, listen to me-" My voice was patient, but not necessarily kind.

"You don't understand! They're still alive! They're only babies! Don't kill them, Zane! Please… Please don't hurt them!" Brenda was panicking fast, tearing at my hard kit in desperate grabs. I put down a thick coat of Tang on the mother's chest and abdomen.

"Bren… This is our job. This is what the Rangers do." I told her the truth as softly as I could. Brenda stopped grabbing at my chest, and looked up to meet my cold eyes.

"...But they're just babies…" Brenda was crying so hard now that she could barely speak.

"Yeah. Monster babies. If we didn't kill them now, Bren, Command would have us kill them later. The only difference about us killing them now, is that they don't get a chance to hurt anyone later." I explained something to Brenda that she had managed to block out back in the academy. Something that Brenda had been able to deny from the security of the Sickbay.

"...Zane, please… Don't do this…" Brendan pushed herself up against my chest, and I wrapped my arms protectively around her.

"Hey Carlos?" I called out, voice still soft.

"Yes, Bastard?"

"Done yet?" I asked.

"All done here."

"-No! Please! They're just-!"

"Okay then, Cortez, light 'em up." I pulled Brenda away from the volatile corpse, and Cortez blasted the napalm saturated cadaver with a jet of his flames. The Nido pups started squealing as soon as the conflagration consumed them.

"You have to look, Bren… This is your duty. You need to watch. See it now, so that you know what it looks like… So that you can be prepared..." I whispered into the sobbing girl's ear. I heard a cry of surprise from the Rangers standing behind me.

"Kill it, Cortez." I ordered, without looking back to confirm my suspicions. Cortez finished off the immolated pup before it could get any further than three meters. The pups could find their instinctive reflexes at that unborn age. All it took to inspire their survival was a little pain.

"You need to look, Brenda…" I turned myself and the teary eyed Ranger at my chest towards the flames. Brenda tucked her face into my shoulder and struggled against my hold. She wanted to escape me. She wanted to run away.

"You can't run, Bren. This is home now. You need to look." I gently rocked her as I stared into the hissing flames. A metallic scent was being given off alongside the standard smell of burning meat. The smell of Nido venom heating up.

"Come on, Ranger. You have to make a hard choice eventually." I felt Brenda loosen up. She turned her wet eyes towards the flames.

"That's my girl."

A loud shriek pealed out as a Nido pup tore clear of its mother's womb. The fire had entered the body cavity, and this straggler was now engulfed in flames. The infant Nidoran put down a full meter before it keeled over and waited to die, but not without making a wretched sound first. Brenda's sobbing face was pressed back into my chest, her shaking hands clamped tightly over her ears as the dying wail continued on.

"For fuck's sake, Carlos! Just step on the damn thing!" That racket was pissing me off. Carlos ran over and stomped the burning pup into silence.

We stayed until the flames had died down. Riot scattered the remains, rolling the charred corpse across the breadth of the glade. The carrion birds would get the detritus before anything big did. A murder of Murkrows were already gathering in the trees, eying the grilled smorgasboard greedily. When Riot finished his gruesome task, I gave Echo the order to return to Frontier Charlie.

"Come on, Rangers. Let's go home." I didn't even have to call them into formation, or give Cortez the standard ten-meters pole order. The entire unit came together as one at my shadow, and we raced the setting sun for the Evening Chorus.

…

"Command, this is Frontier Charlie. It is five minutes till the Evening Chorus. Would you like us to warm up the alto section? Over." The sun had just finished setting, and soon the darkness of night would be complete.

"Frontier Charlie, this is Command. Get those brass pipes spick and span. Over." I smiled as the reply came over my radio.

"Vauban, you're up!" I called my little girl over to a special section beneath the inner compound's mesh. The Hatch.

"Prep a flare, Vauban." Vauban gurgled excitably at my feet. I fought the urge to ruffle her head right then and there. The Evening Chorus would've been a great excuse, but after the way I had treated Butters, I assumed that it wouldn't be an appropriate expression in front of my Squad.

All of Echo had gathered in the inner compound, right down to the bandaged Butters. Cortez stood at the head of all the mon, and Carlos stood at the head of all the humans.

"I'll bet you guys didn't know that my little Vauban could double as a flare gun, didja?" I smirked over at my unit.

…

Chimera Industries had implanted Vauban with a cutting from a Sunflora bloom, back when Waterloo altered her chloroplasts for a hypermetabolism reaction triggered by exposure to ultra-dense UV rays. The reason for the Sunflora splicing was as simple as it was strategic. The Sunflora bloom produced a seed that contained a heavy dose of phosphorescent components. A _very_ concentrated dose of phosphorescent components. When fired off, and shucked of its outer layer, the seed would burn with a light even brighter than the sun. A massive amount of UV rays were generated when the phosphorescent seed ignited. This allowed Vauban to trigger her chloroplast's hypermetabolism, even in the dead of night. A Vauban with both hyperactive chloroplasts and a full stomach was a force to be reckoned with. Because of her hypermetabolism, Vauban could move _fucking fast._ She could actually dust a Rapidash in a sprint. That kind of race was rather amusing to watch, especially given the length of Vauban's stubby legs.

Vauban's modified chloroplasts were just one example of Waterloo's Saboteur Class alterations. These chloroplasts increased a Saboteur's biological-agent payload via rapid repurposed cellular division. When a Saboteur Class Venusaur is exposed to the right stimuli prior to activating their hypermetabolism, the Venusaur essentially converts its entire biomass into a deadly neurotoxin. Once the light starts shining, the Venusaur starts urping up one of the most efficient and deadly nerve-agents known to man in a wide spread. Every living thing caught within that radius without adequate environmental protection seizures so fucking hardcore that they'll fracture their spines and tear apart their own lungs, just from the thrashing of their diaphragms and abdominal muscles. If that don't kill you, then the septic shock will. Nothing in a Saboteur's dispersal reacts well with a living body. The hypermetabolism process kills off the Saboteur of course, but Vauban isn't a "completed" Saboteur Class. She has never undergone the gene-therapy required to transmute her body into a bomb. Meaning that Vauban has only one reaction to exposure with ultra-dense UV rays. Vauban just pulls out the hidden booster rockets that Chimera Industries' genetic-cockanamie left her with, and blasts off into the sunset at mach-ten.

Thank God.

I have fucking nightmares about Vauban exploding. I never want to see a Saboteur Class in action.

-Ever.

…

"This is Frontier Alpha, calling in for the Evening Chorus. Over."

"This is Frontier Beta, standing by for Echo's signal. Over."

"This is Frontier Delta, our fuses are lit. Over.

"This is Frontier Foxtrot, preparing for the crescendo. Over."

"This is Frontier Charlie, we read you all loud and clear. Two minutes before our Da Capo. Command, toll the bell when the orchestra goes into encore. Over." I smirked at my Rangers.

"Twenty-three years, Echo. Twenty-three fucking years…" I murmured to my unit with a shit-eating grin. I could hardly believe it myself. After twenty-three years of silence, Frontier Charlie was once more singing in the Evening Chorus. This might sound melodramatic, given my age, but I had never expected to see Frontier Charlie singing again in my lifetime. Or, even less likely, foreseen myself playing the maestro in Frontier Charlie's resurgence into the Evening Chorus.

I guess I'm just a sucker for history. Everybody has that one whimsical sentiment.

"Pete, pop the Hatch. We've got thirty seconds." It wasn't so much an order as it was an honor. Pete started to wind up a winch, causing the squared off section of mesh above me and Vauban to part quite loudly.

"Oh, I can feel my teeth vibrating…" I rotated my jaw but maintained my smile. We needed to get some oil in the Hatch's grate. That metal on metal screech was absolutely agonizing to stand under.

"Ten seconds, Echo. Start the countdown at five-" My squad threw their voices in with mine, as we ticked away to the Evening Chorus.

"..."

"-Five…"

"-Four…"

"-Three…"

"-Two…"

"-ONE!"

"LET IT RIP, VAUBAN!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. Vauban fired off her phosphorescent seed, and the entire inner compound and surrounding Frontier was blinded by a brilliant green burst of light.

When my eyes adjust to the sudden flash, I scanned the horizon for the rest of the Evening Chorus. Four red flares lit up the night sky, a symbol sent from all of the other Frontier Outposts. A symbol of the Ranger's presence in Viridian. A timeless symbol of our calling.

A symbol of the Ranger's commitment to the safety of humanity.

"Command, this is Frontier Foxtrot. The Fucking Bastard is showboating. Over."

"This is Frontier Alpha. Frontier Charlie? Confirm green flare. Over."

"Frontier Beta hailing Frontier Charlie. Bastard, you smarmy little fuck! Over."

"Frontier Charlie to all Frontier Outposts. Frontier Charlie's flare is green. Deal with it. Over." I gloated into my radio. I recognized several of those voices. My friends in the Vets were sending their regards.

"This is the Colonel to all Frontier Outposts. Frontier Charlie is green. Approved. Nice touch, Bastard. Over." I could almost hear the Colonel laughing in his transmission.

"Frontier Charlie, radio Command first thing in the morning. O'-Six-hundred hours. All other Frontier Outposts, report the morning call as usual. The bell tolls, Rangers. Goodnight, and good luck to you all. Command out."

"Seal the Hatch, Pete. That flare is gonna draw a lot of the night time bugs' attention." I ordered of the twitchy Pete. Vauban's flare had a long burn time, and it would be a while before it landed somewhere in the Frontier.

"Alright, Rangers. It's time to hit the feed bag for both man and mon. Let's go get sick on MREs." The whole unit started groaning. I just smiled. They'd be grateful for the MREs very shortly. None of them knew just how hungry they were yet.

…

"Pete, try the Crab Marsala. It won't give you diarrhea, I promise."

"Are you only going to eat the Spaghetti and Meat Sauce, Carlos? Pussy."

"Bren, don't eat all the Maple Links in one meal. They're not nicknamed 'The Five Fingers of Death' for nothing."

"Amber, have the Cheesy Enchilada. You won't have to worry about shitting for a month after just one spoonful."

"Doubling up on the Lo mein, Erin? Goddamn, you're brave. I'm so fucking glad that I have my own quarters now. Echo, sleep with environmental-masks on. Erin is gonna be volatile."

My lewd banter regarding our dinner filled the Ready Room with roars of laughter. Despite the MREs' vile reputation, empty stomachs could make even cold puke taste like cuisine. We were digging in ravenously, having only eaten Grambars earlier, back on the trek from the M-straight to Frontier Charlie. Despite our unrestrained laughter, its cacophony was completely overwhelmed by the racket our mon were making in their feed trough.

"Goddamnit, Riot! Chew your food! Don't belch it in, you sick fuck!" I hollered over to the noisy Rhyhorn, who was chowing down his fifty-pound dinner like he was worried about a drain appearing in the bottom of his trough. Riot just snorted at me, but he slowed his feeding process accordingly. Vauban and Cortez were sharing a trough with Vespucci; While Whiskers, Butters, and Duster had a trough all of their own. I had rescinded my previous order regarding Butter's confinement to Sickbay, but only after Brenda had promised me that her little monkey didn't throw his poo.

"It's been a rough first day, Echo. But we made it." I smiled as I tucked into my meal, while all of Echo exchanged pleased looks. The day's first genuine moment of relaxation eased the course towards conversation.

"...So Bastard?" Pete started. I tossed my dining utensils on the longtable, and gave Pete my full attention.

"How many Delta-Threes have you killed?" Pete asked carefully. Everybody looked at me, curiosity in every eye.

"Today makes forty-seven." I answered softly. Echo's collection of eyes bulged out of their collective skulls.

"-Forty-seven?" Carlos's jaw dropped.

"Personal executions. I'm not including the Delta-Threes that I assisted the Vets with slaying." I answered. Everybody was exchanging wide-eyed looks now.

"How many in total?" Erin breathed.

"One-hundred-and-seventy-three." I replied. My Echo Squad was looking at me in the strangest fashion now. As if they couldn't believe that I was real.

"That is the total number of S-ranked missions that I have lived through. Most of them had me killing big Nidos or blowing up Beedrill hives. Couldn't give you an exact tally on what was what, but after S-rank mission thirty-six, I just stopped caring." I let them know the truth. I was no longer worried about managing my trophies. I only knew the count from the mission logs somebody else had recorded and put in my file.

"And you're only seventeen years old?" Granny Amber was looking at me like I was an irregularity.

"Somebody has to do it, Rangers. Age does not detract relevance from necessity." I answered. That quieted the topic down. But the discussion was just finding its way onto more comfortable tracks.

"So where did you learn that trick with Riot? Did the Vets teach you that?" Carlos spoke after the long silence had grown too unbearable for the Walkouts to endure. I chuckled.

"No, I taught the Vets how to rodeo. And I'm gonna show you how to rodeo, Carlos."

"M-me-?" Carlos winced when I pointed his ass out.

"You came up with that technique? Where the hell did you get that idea from?" Pete exclaimed, looking at me all crazy-like. I was laughing at Carlos, waiting for him to get past the shock. Might as well answer Pete's question first then…

"Ever hear about the Minoans of Crete?" I asked the table. I got a roomful of blank stares.

"Anyone? Come on, cartographer, tell me that you know about the Cretan Islands and one of their most famous inhabitants?" I looked to Erin for some reinforcement. Nope. Those eyes were whitewashed. Well, the answer certainly wasn't coming from his dumbass-

"Weren't they… Some kind of Grecian tribe that worshipped bulls?" Pete spoke up, drawing every odd look his way. I snapped my fingers and sighed in relief. At least someone in Echo could remember basic history.

"Right you are, Pete. The Minoans. Probably most famous for their legend of the labyrinth and the Minotaur. At least I'm assuming that's all you know about them…" I put a disgruntled eye on Pete, and the innately-nervous Ranger actually shrugged it off.

"Well, at least I know that much." Holy shit. Cocky Pete had found some balls. I just snorted.

"Knowing more than anyone else, isn't always enough, Pete. But yes, at least someone here knows one of the Cretan legends." I took another mouthful of food, before elaborating.

"Bull-vaulting, or bull-leaping." I answered. Everybody was looking at me quite strangely now. I swallowed another bite, before explaining further.

"The Minoans had a religious ritual of sorts. A ritual pertaining to the bull, and in a peculiar and dangerous way, the Minoans made something of a sport out of it." I lowered my utensils, leaned both elbows on the longtable, and rested my chin on conjoined knuckles.

"The Minoans would stand opposed to a bull, and goad it into charging them, before grabbing 'the bull by the horns,' that's the origin of the idiom, mind you; and by using the bull's bucking head, vault over the beast uninjured." I smiled at the end. All of Echo was wearing some pretty fucking funny faces right now. Intrigued and 'you've got to be shitting me' being the most prevalent of expressions at that longtable.

"So you… revived an ancient ritual for use in combat?" Pete shook his head as the revelation occurred to him.

"Well… let's just say that I had to settle for less. I originally wanted to use the Minoan technique for properly mounting a charging Rhyhorn, but they're so damn thick before the neck I had to alter the mount into a kinda hang-on for dear life. Otherwise, it was messy. And fucking painful." Riot punctuated my admission with an amused snort.

"Yeah, Riot… I remember how much you rumbled when my fucking knees compacted against your forehead. Asshole." I chuckled with the Rhyhorn.

"And you want me to learn how to… Rhyhorn-vault?" Carlos sounded nervous.

"Riot is your fucking Siege Class, Carlos. You saw how useful that trick was. You need to learn how to maximize your synergy with Riot. The fucking rodeo would be a great place to start." I put my Commander's face on. Carlos shuddered.

"You'll be wearing the hard kit, and we'll take it slow. After we're done packing away tomorrow's manifest, you, me, and Amber are all heading out to the inner compound. While Amber is working on the relay, you, Riot, and I will be working on the rodeo." I laid it out for them. Carlos's look of pure anxiety was matched only by Amber's expression of overwhelming relief.

"I hope that a pair of front-line Rangers and a Siege Class Rhyhorn practicing in the inner compound won't distract you from your duty, Warrant Officer Hail." I directed that statement to Amber with the typical irritated tone I used when addressing her. Amber swallowed and lowered her eyes. But I could tell that she appreciated the gesture.

"Can I ask another question?" Pete piped up again, drawing my reluctant attention his way.

"When you engaged the Delta-Three, why didn't you just have us all attack it in a group? I mean, we could have called on our mon-" Carlos cut Pete off with burst of laughter. I eyed my Second in Command, feeling rather amused myself.

"Tell'em, Carlos." I grunted, returning to my cooling meal. Carlos stopped laughing and shook his head.

"Pete, we could have done that. Hell, we might even have won. But somebody would have gotten hurt or killed." Carlos explained. That rudimentary prediction didn't quite satisfied Pete.

"But with Riot-"

"The only thing that Riot can do to a Nidoqueen is knock her over with a charge, and Riot can only charge her when she's either distracted or has been previously incapacitated. That Nidoqueen would have had absolutely no problem dodging those charges without the assist from Bastard and Cortez. Rhyhorns can't alter their trajectories after they reach a certain speed-"

"-Ramming speed." I threw in.

"-and if Riot had tried to engage the Delta-Three in close-quarters combat, she would have made mincemeat out of him. Or just poisoned Riot and let her venom wear him out." Carlos explained the Nido's tactics with all the detail of a fucking textbook.

"And you all saw the best my Hunter-Killer could manage. Cortez could barely draw blood. Nidoqueen are tough, and strictly speaking… Echo only has three combat service mon. Vauban, Cortez, and Riot. Had we brazenly engaged the Nidoqueen with six knives drawn and our full numbers deployed… somebody would have died. You need to be smart, and ply your best assets where they're most effective." I finished explaining for Carlos.

"Distract, cover, blitz, cripple, blitz, stun, kill. That's the formula Bastard used for killing a Nidoqueen without risking casualties on our end." Carlos stated. I looked at him with a slight glimmer of approval in one eye. Carlos had actually learned something from watching me work.

"You have to get into their brains, figure out how they think. Once you know that, you can design a counter-strategy for their elimination." I told all of my unit.

"A rather impressive tactic, especially given that you didn't have any D3CUs available." Carlos was looking at me with a new level of respect, as was all of Echo. I just chuckled the compliment away.

"The secret to survival, Echo… Isn't owning the biggest guns. It's knowing how to use what you already have." I answered their looks of praise with the humble wisdom that I had inherited from my time in Spec. Ops.

"Right, clean up and hit the bunks, Echo. The bell tolled almost an hour ago. You are still awake well after lights-out, and all of us are exhausted. We have a very busy day tomorrow stocking this bunker up, so pass out as soon as you hit the pillows." I gave the final order of the day, and all Echo was only too happy to comply.

"Bren, stay here a moment longer." I muttered as the others scrambled to clear their places off of the longtable. Brenda froze in her seat and looked at me fearfully. I wasn't meeting her eyes, though. I was staring at the corner of the table. When the rest of Echo and their mon had retired to the barracks, I steepled my hands together and sighed.

"I'm sorry, Bren." My tone did not sound apologetic in the least. Brenda began to wither in upon herself, eyes vacant and unfocused.

"I'm sorry that you chose to wear a Beret." I grunted, and wiped my nose. Brenda let loose a shuddering breath.

"I know… I know that you aren't cut out for this line of work, Bren." I finally looked at her. Brenda was silently crying, her hands clenched tightly together under the longtable. I sighed again.

"This kind of business… It doesn't favor bleeding hearts, kid." My tone actually sounded gentle. Brenda was cracking again. She'd been holding it in all day, but the Nido-pyre had finally snapped her.

"But I need you to understand, Bren…" I crinkled up the remains of my MRE, and wadded it into a tight ball.

"I need you alive. I need you to be strong. I really… I really don't want to tell your husband that you died under my Command-" I fought back my own tears. I had a good deal of success in such regards, though I doubted that my eyes were their normal non-reddened color. But some of the heartfelt infected my words, giving Brenda the purchase to speak.

"-Wife." Brenda choked. I shook myself.

"Say what?" I asked, startled. Brenda sniffled.

"My wife." Brenda gasped. My eyes widened.

"Whoo-ie! My naughty little Bren! Why didn't you tell me sooner?" I was grinning from ear to ear. That cheesy smile got Brenda to giggle a bit.

"I just… I just didn't know if you-" I cut her off with a snort.

"I want some wedding pictures. Actually, I think that I want some 'bedroom pictures,' too." I smirked. Brenda's new giggle was even louder.

"You're such a pig, Bastard." Brenda laughed. My smirk settled into a smile.

"I am what I eat." I grunted, tossing my Pork and Beans MRE kit at Brenda. She deftly avoided my half-hearted throw. Brenda was overcome with the giggles now, but a look into my eyes calmed her down a bit.

"Did you… Did you really want to see those wedding pictures?" Brenda asked me, tentatively.

"Of course I do." I stood up from my seat. Brenda swallowed, before fishing into her inner coat pocket for a wallet. She was hesitant about opening it, as if she feared that something would be missing when she did.

"This is Melissa." Brenda whispered, finally opening the wallet when I came to stand beside her. A wedding photo was laminated into the left sleeve of Brenda's wallet. Two girls in wedding dresses stood holding the same bouquet in front of an alter. A real smile played on my lips when I saw the two teary-eyed faces beaming up at me from that photo.

"She's beautiful, Bren. Congratulations." I whispered softly over Brenda's shoulder. Brenda shuddered slightly.

"I like to keep this photo close…" Brenda pulled her wallet against her chest. I put a hand on Brenda's shoulder, and gently squeezed.

"I miss her, Zane..." Brenda was crying again, full tilt sniffles and swollen eyes.

"Hey. Bren." I tightened my grip slightly. Brenda curled in over her wallet with a sob.

"Bren, listen to me…" I sat down next to her, pulling her loose bangs back behind an ear.

"Bren… just look at me." My soft voice called the weeping girl's eyes over to mine. I swallowed slightly, but I kept my eyes strong for her.

"I'm going to get you back to Melissa, Bren. I promise you." Brenda took a sudden sharp intake of breath, as she tried to wrestle herself back under control.

"But I need you to stay strong. This is gonna be hard on you. Harder than it's going to be on the rest of us. I can't harden a kind heart, Bren. So I need to protect it." I whispered to her. Brenda was coming out of it. She was down to mere snuffles now.

"You need to put in an effort, kid... And just let me put in the rest." My hand found Brenda's under the table, and she held it firmly.

"Zane…" Brenda choked a bit on my name. I held my firm gaze on hers.

"...Thank you."

I smiled gently, and then clapped Brenda on the shoulder.

"Don't mention it, Bren. Now…" I jerked my head over towards the barracks.

"Go get some sleep." Brenda nodded, and rose from the longtable. She slowly walked her way over to Echo's shared sleeping quarters, and paused right before the door with her back to me. I sighed softly when Brenda passed through the barrack doors without making a sound. Leaning back against the longtable, I wondered if what I had just done was me overstepping my bounds. Cortez approached me, with my wadded MRE packet in his mouth. I took it from him, and pitched it into the rubbish bin.

"Vauban, Cortez. Bed time." I told my two mon. Vauban had been watching the entire affair from the trough, a curious look playing on her face.

"Come on, you two. The Commander needs his sleep." I turned around, and stalked off to the Commander's Quarters, with my two little soldiers in tow.

I removed the dusty sheets from the Commander's Quarters. Apart from the smaller size and the bare concrete walls and floors, it seemed oddly reminiscent of the Colonel's own office. Even the desk was of the exact same make and position of Colonel Howes's office format. A pair of bookshelves, containing mission logs and gardening books were exposed to the light again, as I purged the office of its ghostly white sheets. One layer at a time, a world new to me was being exhumed by my hands, images capturing the purest forms of the past. I pulled off another sheet, and uncovered the Ranger's standards held aloft in the right rear corner. Age had stained these banners, but instead of degrading their form, I found that the weathered appearance only served to accentuate their magnificence. I straightened out one corner of standard's sigil, then I stood back and saluted the Ranger's flag. I felt tears in my eyes as I stood there, absorbing the profanity of my presence in this sacred place. I was just an infant to these walls. I was just a child to this flag. These halls had sheltered heroes for centuries before my birth, and this place had been sealed as a tomb before I was even conceived.

It was overwhelming to be there. It was beyond all my own belief that I was playing a part in this drama.

It felt as if a legacy was being revealed to me, and I was being welcomed into it, despite my own numerous inequities.

I dropped my salute in silent reverence. Then I turned, and took a seat behind my desk. Curiosities left by the former Commander were strewn about the surface, a shrine to the last Echo Commander.

I wasn't going to touch them. They belonged to a greater man than I, and I would honor his station by keeping it true to his trappings. I gently blew the invasive grime off of the desk, and lifted a mission statement twenty-three years old from the center.

I should never have read it. Colonel Howes's final words to the previous Echo Squad were meant for them and them alone. I quickly hid that sheet in the confines of the desk, before succumbing to the tears.

This was too much. This was too much for me. How could I ever hope to satisfy these great men?

I got myself contained. Shaken Zane forfeited control to the Fucking Bastard. I could not doubt. I would succeed. I would bring this fallen temple back into the sun. I would raise more heroes for these halls. And I would make these noble souls proud of this new generation of Rangers.

"Cortez." My voice carried none of the struggle. It was a dry command, one that I would find myself using only a few months later as my standard voice. Cortez approached the desk, and stood silently in front of it, looking up at me with those calm eyes.

"So how did I do?" I asked. Cortez lifted a paw. He held it steady for a moment, and I felt my heart move into my throat. Then Cortez flicked his paw twice, before lowering it. I sat back in my desk, wearing a soft smile.

"If anyone is gonna weigh and measure me in this hall, Cortez… You would be the fittest judge." I whispered softly. My dog closed his eyes and tightened his black lips. He seemed to be smiling at me.

"Don't you get all smug on me, Cortez. I am still your CO." I grumbled as I pushed myself out of the seat. Cortez sneezed as I retreated into my quarters.

Smirking fuck.

I sat down on my bed, a new cover of coarse wool sheets wrapped around the ancient mattress. Prepping myself for sleep, I stripped of my attire, and washed with a basin of cold water and soap. Laying on the rough sheets, I stared up at the ceiling light, fighting the rising urge that privacy tortured me with.

But it was futile.

"Vauban." I called out her name. Vauban and Cortez had followed me into my quarters, and had set up camp nestling together in a padded corner pen, made for a much larger mon than either of them. Vauban looked up at my spread arms in disbelief.

"Come here, girl."

Vauban hesitated. She hadn't seen me like this since back in the academy. I don't think that Vauban could believe that I'd finally lowered my walls again. It took her a moment to overcome the shock, reminding me fiercely of our first meeting at Role Call.

One step forward.

One step back.

Two steps forward.

Pause.

Blink. Blink.

Smile.

Charge.

I caught Vauban's pudgy body mid leap as she scraped her belly on the edge of my mattress. I pulled her wheezing figure up below my chin and nestled my nose into her smooth face.

"I missed you, girl…" I whispered, as Vauban's tiny form curled up against my collars.

"I missed you…" I ran a hand down Vauban's head, and found myself smiling when she started snoring almost instantly. She always fell asleep quickly in my arms. I had no idea how Vauban could be so comfortable in my embrace. I kissed Vauban's nose, getting a funny little warble out of my little girl. She huddled up against me even closer. I chuckled, and just stroked her sleeping face and bulb for a moment longer. Sighing, I shifted and made to turn off the lights. Then I noticed Cortez watching me with his purple eye.

"Hey, Cortez-" My voice boomed in that silent room.

"Could you maybe sleep facing the other way? I might fucking scream if I wake up to that side of you. No offense." I was grinning like my namesake. Cortez sneezed again as he rose, and positioned himself accordingly. His green eye was now regarding me with a fond twinkle.

"Good night, y'all. We're all waking up first, so sleep deep." I reached over to the lightswitch, and plunged the room into the thickest night that I had ever seen. You could practically feel the weight of that shadow in every heavy breath. It was actually eerie, being caught in that total darkness. But then I heard Vauban snoring in the gloom, and her soft sound guided me into a dreamless sleep.

…

I woke to the sound of my alarm. I quickly rose, flicking the switch above my head, bathing the room in feeble, sterile light. The bunker was ice cold. For a moment, I was worried that the environmentals had failed. But then I realized that this was all just a part of living underground.

Vauban and Cortez didn't struggle to rise at all. Vauban was on the floor before my toes discovered just how unpleasant frozen concrete feels. I stomped the stiffness out my legs, and did a couple of vigorous stretches to loosen my form and warm myself up. Then I dressed, and lifted the dusty morning horn off of the wall.

I cleaned that horn with a rag as I marched silently towards the Barracks. Vauban trundled at my left rear, and Cortez walked at my right rear. I was wearing a stern expression, just incase any of Echo was already awake in the Barracks. Silently opening the heavy fire door to the Barracks, my morning unit slipped into the snoring room.

I went straight over to Riot, and with a series of firm pats on his lips, silently woke the siege beast. Then I leaned over with an evil smirk on my face, and whispered my devious plan for waking the Walkouts into Riot's ear. The Rhyhorn rumbled his approval, and rose to stand beside Cortez and me.

I looked at my wrist, and read the time on my watch. Ten seconds to go.

I raised the horn to my lips, and started the countdown with my spare hand at five seconds till.

Four.

Three

Two.

One.

Mark.

I blew the morning horn as loudly as I could, but it was no match for the combined roars of Cortez and Riot. All of Echo woke in a panic attack, heads hitting ceilings and top bunks. I had to stop blowing the morning horn prematurely. I was laughing way too damn hard to keep my lips properly puckered.

"Rise and shine, Echo. We got a half-an-hour before check-in with Command. I want us all dressed and fed by that time. Let's get a move on." I walked right out of that gasping room with Riot, Cortez, and Vauban in pursuit, all of us still laughing at the panting Walkouts, clutching at their hammering chests.

...

"Command this is Frontier Charlie, it is O'-six-hundred hours. Echo is making the call-in. Over." I spoke into my portable radio at the Comm Room. Amber and Pete didn't have the Comm Center and relay up and running yet, but they had managed to wire a feed from my radio to one of the long-range antennas that still functional on Frontier Charlie's relay.

"Frontier Charlie, this is the Colonel. How did the morning greet Echo, Bastard? Over." That kind of surprised me. It wasn't every morning that the Colonel personally answered the Frontier Outposts.

"We are just dandy, Colonel. How are things at Prime? Over." I respectfully answered the Colonel's query. I heard a chuckle on the other end.

"Quiet, now that Warrant Officer Hail is gone. Over." I grinned over my shoulder to the scandalized Amber. The rest of Echo was cracking up.

"Yeah, thanks for that, by the way. You old coot. Over." I got one hell of a laugh out of the Colonel for that one, and a gasp of surprise from my unit for my daring disrespect.

I like to think that the Colonel and I have an understanding.

"Any events to report, Echo? Over." The Colonel's concern was audible over his recent mirth.

"Echo bagged her first Delta-Three yesterday. Nidoqueen. Roughly eighteen pups too. Over." I reported.

"Already starting those patrols, Bastard? I thought that you might want to settle in before you went playing the dangerous game. Over." The Colonel sounded pleased.

"It seemed like the appropriate move. Eliminate a threat, make our presence known, build up morale, you know… Standard procedure. Over." I made my voice sound casual.

"Standard procedure my ass. I told you to give it two weeks before you started head-hunting, Ranger." The 'Over' was forgotten. This was a personal call now.

"Well, Cortez didn't want to wait, and we came through flawlessly. A bruise or two on my elbows from the rodeo, but that was it. Just a clean-cut kill." I stated calmly.

"Don't get reckless, Bastard. Those are Walkouts you are working with. Not Vets. Start them slow, and work your way up. I have total confidence in you _and_ them _._ Don't rush them. Save the Safari for later. I want expedition and intel covered first."

"Yes, sir. I suppose now would be a bad time to tell you that I'm not standing here all alone?" I actually sounded worried. I didn't think that the Colonel wanted Echo hearing his praise quite so early into our mission.

"Goddamnit, Bastard…" The Colonel got grumpy pretty fucking quick.

"Echo. Forget everything you just heard. You are all worthless shameful pieces of shit under my boot heel. None are worse than the Bastard. You have all disappointed me. Over." My unit was laughing uproariously, despite the severity in the Colonel's voice. He couldn't cover it up, no matter how fierce he made himself sound.

"If it's any consolation, Colonel, Warrant Officer Hail broke down crying when you mentioned her earlier. Over." I said it in a voice thick with grin.

"I did not!" Amber cried out indignantly, but I'd already taken my finger off the call switch.

"Glad to hear it. Make her suffer, Bastard. Over." The Colonel's deadly voice silenced the room.

"It would be my honor, sir. Over." I put my hand over my heart and vocalized my smarmiest smirk.

"Quit the boot-licking, Bastard. Anything particular you need the Aerial Units to send? Over." The Colonel had dispensed with pleasantries, and it was all business now.

"Sooner or later, we're gonna want a skycam and harness for Erin's Spearow. We can use Vespucci for gathering intel once we get him rigged with a camera. Other than that, we're gonna need some parts for the relay. It got pretty badly weathered over time, and our Field-Tech reckons that we're gonna need an entirely new broadcasting platform just to get it running again. Oh, and extra food for the mon. They're having to put in overtime, and Riot ate everything that we brought with us last night. I can't think of much else. Over." I listed off our manifest to the Colonel.

"Right, well the camera is going to have to wait, but I can get the broadcasting platform out today. I'm also adding some fresh foods to the list. I don't need Frontier Charlie smelling like vomit when the Vets come patronizing. Lay off the MREs. Kill the fresh stuff first, and then go back to gagging yourselves. I'll have the package dropped at twelve-hundred-hours. Make sure that the Hatch is open. This is the Colonel, over and out." The Colonel cut the feed. I smiled back at my unit.

"Fresh food… Can any of you cook?" I witnessed every happy face fall.

Well, every face but-

"I can cook!" Pete volunteered.

"Right, Petey is the Camp Cook. Meaning the rest of you are on swab detail when the kitchen fire is stoked. Now everybody grab a mop. We're gonna finish cleaning this place up before the package gets here." I smiled at my unit. Erin was the only one who groaned.

Don't push me, Private. I may have changed my tune, but I'm not going easy on your ass.

"Let's get fucking moving, Echo! We are green, we are mean, and we are clean! Get those asses scrubbing!" I barked my order loudly and smirked when they rushed to fulfill it. I followed them into the Utilities, and pulled a bucket and a mop out for myself. Then I went back to my office, and made the place shine like it was supposed to.

…

"Holy shit. That's a lot of crap. Okay, Echo get these packages stowed. Riot, you and Carlos are handling the big ones. Pete, keep Duster away from the electronics. I don't need his static fucking them up. Amber, as soon as we uncover the broadcasting platform, your ass is under the relay. Once we get this shit all housed, Pete, Erin and Brenda are to going to get it all shelved. Pete, you're Radio and Kitchen stock. Erin you're the miscellaneous grunt, and Brenda; you handle the medical supplies extra carefully. Riot, Carlos and me are gonna be brushing up on our combat training in the compound, and Amber is confined to the relay until it works. Let's move, Echo! Get it all gone!" I roared the strategy while jerking thumbs over my shoulder to the appropriate mon and Walkouts. Everybody hauled to get the Pidgeot Flight Squadron's wares stowed. We had some backbreaking work ahead of us, but Riot was gonna handle most of that.

"Is that the broadcasting platform?" I asked Pete as he shuffled through the crates.

"I think so." Pete cracked the top, and I threw aside the straw.

"It's your lucky day, Amber, we found it. Carlos, get Riot over here and get this sucker into position next the relay. Amber, go get your kit. You start working immediately. Pete, square the kitchen supplies away first, then take care of the Comm Room. Both of you and Amber get Radios on a private channel now, and work out the relay's fine tuning. I'm not waiting, Rangers, let's do it today!" I altered my orders on the broadcasting platform's immediate discovery. Now all of Echo's assets were converging together on Frontier Charlie's radio-fix priority.

"I want this platform wired up in four hours, Field-Tech. Get a move on." I hustled Amber into action.

Unfortunately…

"It's going to take me at least seven hours to do the job. Why don't you let the Field-Tech set her own hours?" Amber replied snidely.

Que exactly what I'd been gunning for.

"Echo, stop whatever the fuck you're doing and put your eyes on Warrant Officer Hail right now." My voice was cold, and every member froze when they heard it. Amber particularly. I turned around and faced Amber directly.

"I told you what I wanted, Amber. You know what I didn't ask for?" The Fucking Bastard bore down on her like a falling anvil. Amber backed up. That only made me even more angry.

"WARRANT OFFICER HAIL! YOU DO NOT BACK AWAY FROM ME WHEN I AM CHEWING YOUR ASS OUT!" Amber dropped her kit, and assumed a shaking attention stance. Everybody was looking at me with yesterday's dread rising in their eyes.

"Now… What did I not ask for, Warrant Officer?" I asked Amber, a mere six inches from her person. Amber was beginning to panic. My head was shaking from the fury.

"I did not ask for your shitty attitude. I told you to get the job done in four hours. News Flash: I am a qualified Field-Tech. I know damn well it doesn't take seven hours to wire a fucking platform in. So why do you need an extra three?" I walked a circle around Amber, glaring at her every angle.

"I- I just-" Amber was trying to stutter up an excuse, but her frazzled brain couldn't design one under the pressure.

"Were you were just trying to bullshit me so that you could slack off? Well? Is that what you were trying to do?" I paused my pace at her left side.

"I wasn't trying to-"

"WARRANT OFFICER HAIL! WERE YOU TRYING TO BULLSHIT ME, YES OR NO?!" I roared. Amber couldn't answer. No was a lie that I could smell. Yes was a truth that I couldn't abide.

"One chance, Amber… You answer me now, or I'll make you sleep outside the gate…" My voice was dangerously low. My Walkouts were trembling again. They had all hoped that this side of me was gone.

Nope. It had just waiting for them to slip up.

"-Yes…" Amber sobbed. I worked my jaw something fierce.

"Pete, back a kit for Amber. She's sleeping in the inner compound tonight." I growled.

"NO!" Amber freaked out, but my glare told her to shut her mouth tight.

"You fucked up, Amber. Now you get to stomach the consequences." I was breathing rage through my nose. My temper was flaring, and all of Echo could see it. Even so, Carlos decided to speak up.

"Come on, Bastard… You don't really mean that, do you?" Carlos sounded worried.

"The hell I do, Carlos. You all might have thought that my soft side was here to stay, but let me correct you. We are still in the Frontier. My Frontier. You play by my rules, and I'll give you some leeway. You try to fuck with me… You're all gonna find out why they call me the Fucking Bastard." I rumbled.

"Come on, Bastard… You're going to kill her if you make her sleep outside…" Pete was taking the plate for Amber. I rounded on him next.

"Better yet, Pete. Pack six kits. We're all sleeping outside tonight." I growled. Everybody locked up. That was not something they had seen coming.

"You will learn, Rangers. You will learn to fear. And you will learn what it is you need to fear. Sleeping outside tonight? Doesn't scare me one bit. I lasted two weeks alone with a broken leg out in the Frontier, without any walls or a half cracked mesh to guard my ass. None of you have figured it out yet. You still don't know what to fear." I was about to storm off, but worried Brenda stopped me.

"Please Zane, you promised-" I pulled Brenda around me and placed her with the rest of Echo.

Fine. I'm done going soft. I'm gonna tell you all what you need to fear.

"I promised Colonel Howes that I was going to make you five Walkouts into Rangers. Guess what is gonna happen we go on Safari? We'll all be sleeping outside. Without any walls or mesh. The only thing that is gonna cover our asses is our Squad mates. You all gave me the perfect opportunity to break you into the Ranger's life. Now get this shit stowed. We may be getting wet tonight, but our supplies aren't." I growled over Brenda's begging. She fell back, teary eyed. I looked around at my shaking Squad, before I addressed the cold and fearful units beneath my Command.

"You have to learn, Rangers. You have to figure it out. I can tell you what I fear. But it will never compare to that moment when you realize it. We are Rangers. It is our duty to protect mankind from the mon. And when one of you dies, and the others watch… You will understand just how fragile mankind's survival is. And at that point, you will either submit and die as well… Or persevere and rise to the call. That's how I learned it. That's how every Ranger learns it. Our motto is not based on self-sacrifice because of some poet's floral ideals. We fight and die, so that what we love-" I looked right into Brenda's eyes when I spoke these words. I knew that she better than anyone would understand them.

"-Does not die."

Brenda did not disappoint me. The tears still trickled down her face, but her breathing steadied. She met my eyes. Those same eyes she had seen last night. We were both silent, holding each other's gaze. I could see it. Brenda understood. And she had the courage to face it.

There is a strength in compassion. I will never deny that. I may have had my doubts before, but Brenda wiped them all away in that one moment. That moment when Brenda realized something that I had only realized…

...After I had held a dying man in my arms.

"Brenda." My harsh voice gave her reason to jump.

"Tell Echo what you just told me." I grunted. Brenda took several deep breathes, before she complied to my order.

"We'll be fine tonight, Echo. There's no reason to fear." Brenda spoke firmly. My heart was swimming in pride. The meekest of Echo was now its most fearless.

"Brenda, what are you-"

"Shut the hell up, Carlos. Otherwise _Brenda…_ Will be my Second in Command." I let that kick to the groin set in. But Brenda's words had an effect. The fear in Echo's eyes was dampened somewhat.

"Right. Now that the moment has passed… Resume your duties, Echo." I looked over to Cortez, and shot him a quizzical glance. The dog raised his right paw, and flicked it twice. I smirked to myself. It was all about the approach.

…

"Okay, Carlos. Just squat down and put your palm out." I instructed Carlos in the basics of the rodeo. He was still shaken from my earlier decision to sleep outside, but Brenda's confidence had bolstered Echo's confidence. Echo was beginning to act like a Squad. Every member contributing to the strength of the whole. Confidence. They may have been scared, but they weren't scared of me.

It was a step in the right direction.

"Alright, I'm gonna punch your hand a couple of times. Get your reflex in. I don't want you thinking about this part, I need you to grab onto my fist when it connects." I winked at Riot, who was standing by behind us. The Rhyhorn grunted. He had an idea how my mischievous mind worked.

"Okay, punch one coming up." I flung my fist into Carlos's hand. He favored wringing his hand over grabbing my fist.

"Damnit, Bastard! Do you have to hit so hard?" Carlos massaged his hand. I snorted.

"That was nothing, Carlos. Wait till Riot hits it." I grinned. Carlos groaned in dread.

"Maybe I don't want to learn how to rodeo…" Carlos muttered.

"Too bad, Carlos. Palm out." I ordered. Carlos complied.

"Now remember, keep your arm loose, and your body rigid. When Riot makes contact with your hand, you're gonna want to jump towards him. Otherwise you'll just get dragged behind. Punch number two incoming." I flung another hook. Carlos grabbed my fist right off the bat.

"Good. Again." Punch number three landed, and Carlos fumbled it.

"Try again." I gleefully stated. Carlos just groaned. Punch number four through seven went off without a hitch. Carlos's hand had to be numb with pain right now. I looked over my shoulder, and jerked my head at Riot. I swear that Rhyhorn was smiling at me.

"Okay, number eight incoming. Now I want you to jump this time. To your right side." I told Carlos.

"We're moving to the jump already?" Carlos sounded nervous.

I guess he knew me.

"Justy stay cool, Carlos. Alright, here it comes." I stepped back and let Riot take over. Carlos didn't even know Riot's horn from my fist when it hit his palm. It wasn't until his feet made contact with Riot's jaw that Carlos realized that he'd been duped.

To his credit, Carlos held on for about eight meters before he tumbled off of Riot's head.

"Not bad. Now we've got to work on that jump." Carlos rolled on the ground coughing.

"Come on, Carlos. You're just winded. Get up and try again." Carlos struggled to his feet.

"Permission to speak freely?" Carlos groaned. I smiled at him.

"I'm looking forward to it."

"You're such a fucking bastard, Zane." Carlos wheezed. That got me laughing.

…

"Amber, where we at?" I asked as I knelt down next to her under the relay. She didn't answer me.

"Warrant Officer Hail…" Danger voice.

"I'm a little fucked up right now, okay?!" Amber stuck her head out of the mess of wires. She was still crying. I started laughing, causing her no undue stress.

"You're not dying tonight, Amber. Unless you keep using that tone with me." I growled, cutting my chuckles short.

"Yeah, right. The Beedrill totally won't squeeze through those holes and kill us all in our sleep!" Amber no longer cared about my threats. She really did think that she was going to die tonight.

"Beedrill aren't nocturnal. The only bug I'd be worried about is the Venonats, but it ain't their season yet." I stated calmly. Amber froze when she looked at me.

"You're so fucking dumb, Amber. The worst we're gonna get hit with tonight is the rain. You need to use your fucking head before you panic. I wanted you to sleep outside tonight so that I didn't have to deal with your dumbass. Not because I wanted you dead. I'd slit your fucking throat if I wanted you dead." I informed Amber. She looked up at me as if I was spewing bullshit.

"...And that speech about one us dying, and the others watching?" Amber retched. I sighed and shook my head.

"I'd prefer if you didn't have to learn that under my Command. But the possibility exists, so I want you all to be prepared for it." I knelt down, and pulled a pair of pliers from Amber's kit, before wedging myself next to her under the relay.

"Death is a fact of life, Amber. Even you should know that. But extinction-? That's not something you've ever thought about, is it?" I asked, as I began to work on the relay's wiring. Amber just watched me.

"You'll learn. Sooner or later. I don't really have much that I fear losing. No family, no kids, no wife, not much of anything." I stated the facts in a weary voice. It didn't really trouble me anymore, talking about my lack of a family. At one point in my life, it used to break me just thinking about it.

"But when I see kids smiling up at their parents… When I see couples being wed… When I see men, just talking philosophy on their barstools… I know what I'm ready to die for. I may have joined the Rangers thinking only of my Black Beret… But I learned something along the way. And on that list I just mentioned? The list of things that I would willingly die for?" I stopped stripping the wires of their insulation, and turned to look at Amber's mystified eyes.

"The Rangers are on that list, Amber. They are my family. They share my cause. I've never known such a calling like the Rangers. The Call of Brotherhood. The Call of Mankind." I sighed, and exchanged my pliers for some port-clamps.

"I used to want a Black Beret, because I thought that I'd look badass sexy in one. Now I want one because it shows how far I'm willing to go for mankind… And just how much the Rangers mean to me." I clamped in a set of cables. Amber was still silently watching me.

"It's the Colonel's hope for all of you… To realize that our mission isn't just limited to securing the G.I. bill... We're actually here to save people, Amber. And I like that." Amber was looking at me oddly, as if she didn't recognise me at all. As if I was speaking a different language, a language that she could understand on some primal level.

"Now are you going to fucking help me finish this fucking relay, OR NOT?!" I threw a pair of pliers at Amber when I shouted at her.

Way to make the moment complete.

…

"Okay, Echo. Consider this a Safari Drill. We'll have one mon and Trainer on watch at all times. There are six of us, so we'll break it up into hour-and-half watches. I'll take first watch if no one else has any objections. I wouldn't worry about stupid things like mon getting into the compound. Nothing small enough to squeeze through the mesh's cracks can scale the walls or do serious damage to us, other than the Beedrill, and they call it quits at night. So despite the dread of dying you're all probably experiencing, the likelihood is nearly nonexistent." I told Echo Squad over dinner. Pete claimed that he cook, but boiled cabbage heads and scrambled eggs did not strike me as a proper meal. So I was substituting with a Grambar as well.

"What do we do if a Beedrill does get through?" Carlos asked hesitantly. I smiled.

"Seeing as this is a Safari Drill, we'll use the standard means. Shake your Squadmates awake, whisper the situation in their ear. Have your mon silently engage the threat while you quietly raise the alert." I interwove my fingers, and a look of infinite patience overcame my exterior.

"The idea is to neutralize the threat without making enough noise to draw the attention of other threats. That is Safari 101. Discretion saves lives." I explained.

"So you think that we'll be okay?" Pete asked through a mouthful of dripping cabbage. I chuckled.

"When it is Amber's turn to watch, I'm effectively putting my life in her hands. And you know what? I'm going to sleep soundly despite her incompetence." I replied. Even Amber looked at me weirdly.

"If Bastard says we'll be fine, we'll be fine." Brenda spoke up. I did feel slightly nervous when she said that.

"Sooner or later, Echo… We'll be out in the Frontier for weeks at a time. You will learn not to fear these trivial details. Like the Colonel asked me to, I'm breaking you in slowly. Which brings me to my next point." I looked at Erin.

"With the activation of our Communications array, Frontier Charlie is effectively an active Outpost. It still needs some fortifications to the outer defenses, but we can't do that without the required parts. Those parts have to be trekked in. We can't fly a new mesh into the Frontier. It's not feasible in the slightest. And if you got a look at our mesh's perimeter… You'd see the rusty cracks buckling the entire structure from the foundations. We can't fix that. We need a new mesh." I stated. Everybody was looking at me, trying to figure out where I was going with this.

"So we are going to have to open up a road to the M-straight." I explained. That made everybody stop chewing.

"It will take years to complete a road through the Frontier. So we're gonna start now. As in tomorrow." I dropped that bombshell with a smile. Silverware hit the longtable, dropped from numb hands.

"Now Frontier Charlie once had a road leading to it. That got completely destroyed by both time and the mon. We cannot reuse that path. The topography isn't even the same, for God's sake. So Command gave us a brilliant solution." Nobody had resumed eating yet. I couldn't help but chuckle.

"Frontier Delta is twenty-one klicks north of us. Across the Long Sway. All level, mostly cleared land. It's pretty much a plain. Saves us a huge amount of work clearing the forest for a road. Now Frontier Delta _does_ have its own road. We link up with Frontier Delta, and we have access to the M-straight through their road. Oh yeah, I should also mention how the linked Outposts could be useful in the event that either Frontier Charlie or Frontier Delta require reinforcements from one another. So the Rangers stand to gain one hell of foothold in the Frontier by establishing this road. One might even suggest a permanent foothold. Tomorrow, our Navigations expert is going to be taking a trip up into the Long Sway for intel on the landscape. And all of Echo is going to be accompanying our Navigations expert in order to protect his ass." I laid out one of the highpoints on Echo's mission into sector Charlie. No one was very happy about it.

"You gotta be fucking-"

"-Where the hell are we going to-"

"-Is Command insane!?"

"-We're not Vets! They can't honestly-"

"-Please tell me this is-"

"Riot, shut em all up." I ordered. Riot roared so damn loudly that it took a moment for my ears to stop ringing. Once I could hear myself speaking, I continued.

"This is our mission, Rangers. Ill prepared though we may be, we are plunging into the Brink, and then we are returning home, safe and sound. End of story." I stated calmly.

"Zane… If I may?" Brenda was asking me real politely. I turned to her with a pleasantly intrigued look on my face.

"How do you feel about our chances in the Long Sway?" I froze. Of all the questions she had to ask…

"I said it before, Echo. This is our mission. And we will see it done." I said it all in a calm voice, putting my hands below the table in order to hide my shaking.

The Long Sway. I'd only been there twice before. Both times I'd watched a Ranger die.

I was positive that tomorrow…

Somebody in Echo was going to die.

…

"Why are you setting up your kit so close to me, Bren?" I grumbled as she tossed down her bag an inch away from mine.

"Is it a problem?" Brenda asked, nervously.

"Do you snore?" I asked. Brenda giggled.

"I don't think so."

"Well than I don't think that it's a problem. Do you want second watch?" I asked, unconcerned. Brenda nodded.

"Fine, I'll wake you up when it's time." I sat down on my sleeping bag. I stared up at the sky, and watched the smoke rings left behind by the Evening Chorus fade away. I'd used the regular flare gun for Frontier Charlie's role in the Evening Chorus. Vauban's flare had too long a burn time, and I didn't want to stir up the Frontier tonight.

"Zane…" I swallowed. I hated when Brenda called me that. It always made me feel guilty.

"What is bothering you?" Brenda asked. I shrugged.

"Nothing. Except that everybody else is still taking their sweet fucking time washing up." I growled. Brenda chuckled.

"I think they're just nervous." Brenda murmured.

"No shit."

I sounded irritated. I hoped it would throw Brenda off.

"...Zane?"

No fucking luck.

"...Brenda, you don't want to know." I answered. But Brenda wasn't letting me off just for that.

"It has to do with our mission tomorrow, doesn't it?" Brenda asked. I sighed silently. I needed to keep my mouth shut. They didn't need-

"...I'm afraid, Bren. You know what that means, don't you?" I don't know why I told Brenda that.

"Zane, I trust you. If you tell me that everything is going to be okay-"

"-Then I would be lying to you, Bren." I cut her off. I stared at the far wall, though I wasn't really seeing it. Something was bubbling up. Something was coming out. Something that I had a duty to keep from my Squad.

Doubt.

"-I just… Can't shake this gut feeling. I know what it means. I… I hope I'm wrong, but…" I was gritting my teeth against the fear.

Brenda's arms fell around my shoulders, and her head rested between my shoulderblades.

"...You remember what I said earlier today… About a lesson that we could only learn, watching a Ranger die?" I swallowed hard.

"-I learned that lesson in the Long Sway, Brenda…" Her arms tightened on me.

"Zane... don't worry." Brenda whispered. I fought myself back under control. This entire day had been torturing me. I'd been getting soft all damn day. Ever since the Colonel told me in a private communique that we were accelerating our advance. I thought that I had months to prepare them for the Long Sway, but on our the third day in sector Charlie…

"I can't lose one of _my Rangers,_ Bren. I can't." I felt the tears pooling, and I cursed myself for letting them get that far. I had been warned about this. I had been trained to resist this. My first Command was going to be an emotional trial for me. It was for every Squad leader. These are my units. My responsibility. I have to protect them-

-But I wasn't suppose to.

Squad leaders were just intended to marshal their units. Not protect their Squad. That wasn't their purpose.

The final mission statement of the Echo Commander who came before me proved that.

The Echo Commander had to divide his Squad based off of their assets, and deploy them where they were the most effective. It was a game, turning men into chess pieces. A ploy that quantified a man into his most basic value. What a man could contribute, and what a cause could afford to lose.

Nothing else.

The former Echo Commander had played that game with his men.

And in doing so, he killed them.

The Rangers who died on the otherside of these walls… They weren't deployed there because Perimeter Defense was their strongest suit.

They were put outside the walls, because they were the least important pieces.

The Echo Commander used them as a distraction, so that he could get his big pieces into position.

And those big pieces...

"When he died… Did he wonder if he was going to hell for killing his men?" I fought the rising panic. Brenda held me all the tighter. She might not have known what I was talking about, but she could feel me breaking in her arms.

"Zane… Don't worry. I'll be with you tomorrow. I'll be right beside you the whole way. I'll be strong for you." Brenda's soft words pushed me out of her arms. I took several steadying breaths, before I got myself under control again.

"I'll wake you for the second watch. You get some sleep while you can." The Fucking Bastard ordered Brenda away from him with his harsh tone.

I could not doubt. I had to succeed.

I could not doubt.

I could not doubt…

…

I kicked Carlos in his side. The Ranger scrambled out of his sleeping bag, expecting an attack.

"Morning dumbass." I threw down a plate of food on his lap.

"Don't worry. Pete was cooking with supervision. I almost wanted to call the mission off until we all stopped farting." I explained to my nonplussed number two. Carlos snorted.

"Amber! Wakey-wakey." I threw one of Carlos's boots at her. She jumped awake, panic first as well.

"Look at that. The ginger Sudowoodo rises." I mocked Amber from my lofty position above Carlos.

"Well, come on. With your two late asses counted for, that means all of Echo lived through a night in the Frontier. Whooptifuckingdoo for Echo. Now get your fucking ugly mugs down in the bunker and cleaned up. We're going to start on that mission debriefing shortly. Report to the longtable as soon as you're both ready." I left my two strangling Rangers in the morning sun. It was O'-nine-hundred hours. I'd let them sleep in late. Essential personnel, chiefly myself and Erin, woke up at the standard time. Erin and I had thrown most of what we needed together, but we were waiting for the last of Echo to join us for the final stage in the planning.

"Okay, here is our Frontier Charlie." I pointed out the marker on the map laid across the longtable.

"And here is Frontier Delta." I jabbed my finger at the point of reference.

"And all of this-" I waved my hand in circular pattern spanning roughly fourteen klicks in distance, according to the map's scale.

"-is the Long Sway." All of Echo was leaning in now. The Long Sway didn't look like much on the map. Just a massive leveled field where the Viridian Forest had simply backed away. A couple of green timbered islands stood out amongst the expanse of white paper, but they were few and far between.

"Now, the Long Sway is bordered by the Sung River on the west flank. It's a small canyon of sorts, steep sides, whitewater river at the bottom. Now the Sung River has three bends. This is Sung Minor-"

Point.

"-Sung Ursa."

Point.

"-And this big one right here is just called the Sung Bend." I indicated the largest bend with another jab.

"Now for obvious reasons, we want to avoid the Sung River when building our road. We don't want to build a bridge out in the Frontier, that's just asking for the mon to rip it down. Erin and I have already charted a course up into the Long Sway. It meanders a bit, but it keeps us on a covered route. We'll always be in sight of a treeline, which could beneficial, given that such a border is rarely patrolled by the big mon. Forest mon don't like being exposed to the open sky, and plains mon don't like the claustrophobic settings provided by the treeline. So our route is strategic. It does hug the Sung River in some parts, but the-"

"Hey Zane?" Carlos cut me off. I looked up, feeling slightly pissed for having been interrupted.

"What's going on?" Carlos sounded worried.

"I'm trying to lay out a fucking route for us, Carlos. What do you think is going on?" I growled. Carlos licked his lips.

"It's just that-"

Don't you fucking say it.

"-You seem a little… uptight." Carlos finished lamely.

"Uptight… Hmm… And interesting way of putting it." I pretended to think deeply about it.

"You know, I wonder… Why would I be uptight right now?" My voice dipped into the danger setting. Carlos swallowed. He knew what was coming. Everybody saw it coming.

"MAYBE I'M FUCKING UPTIGHT BECAUSE YOU FUCKING WALKOUTS ARE FUCKING INTERRUPTING ME!" I roared. Nobody jumped. Nobody even flinched. I was losing it.

My composure.

"-Okay, we're gonna try again. The Sung River. We're gonna hug it some of the way. It presents us with a bit of a double edged sword. One, we can't cross it, so If we need to run, due west is out of the question. On the other hand, we don't have to cover our west side. The benefit counters the cost. Now we are aiming to go about midway into the Long Sway-"

I carried on about the terrain, approaching it from every angle, analyzing and coss-analyzing every possible avenue open to us. Echo didn't have too much to add in this regard. Erin and I had studied our selected course cold-shit. We knew where we were going. Now we needed to plan for what we should expect on our way there.

"Mon. We need to discuss the mon." I clapped my hands together, and pulled out several reference sheets.

"Now the Nidorino are the primary threat. The packs are still very active, but I've got even worse news-" I sighed and pulled out a flagged sheet.

"Nidoking. Frontier Delta confirms that there are still three active 'rape gangs' in the vicinity between sector Charlie and sector Delta. Two of these Packs have already killed Trainers. One of the aforementioned, Pack K-31, just killed two Vets last week. Command has sent Delta Squad and Alpha Squad into the Long Sway, but they returned back to Prime after finding dittly. So all three Nidoking Packs are presumed active and their whereabouts are unknown. Now I need to enlighten you on our Nidoking engagement contingency." I tossed down the referance sheet, and leaned over the table.

"One, a group of Nidoking hunting in a Pack is not something that we can engage."

"Two, their noses are almost as sharp as a Growlithe's, so they'll smell us coming around the same time that Cortez smells them. Or worse, they'll even stalk our tracks, giving us no forewarning whatsoever."

"Three, they're not like the females. Nidoqueens will give you a warning bellow right before they kill you. The males will give you a warning bellow right after they kill you."

"Four, if we have to call for reinforcements because of a Nidoking Pack, we will effectively be asking Command to avenge our deaths."

"Five, start praying that we don't run into a Nidoking Pack right now, because if we do, the mission is just as fucked as we are."

I pulled up another sheet. Echo was looking pretty pale.

"Now I have confidence, that the more common threat; the Nidorino Packs, are something that we can handle. They're fast, but stupid. They'll try to hit you with their horn, and dump a load of lethal venom in you. The best strategy for engaging an actively hostile Nidorino is to goad it into charging, evading, and then running it through with your knife when it tries to correct itself. Avoid the horn, just dodge the initial strike and aim for the back. Nidorinos puss out if they get hurt enough. Killing them is not mandatory for victory." I tossed down that sheet, and lifted another.

"Beedrill. Nasty as sin, but the easiest species to avoid, as well as being the easiest species to handle in a group. All we'll need to do, is what I mentioned before. Light up the plains, and watch them kill themselves flying into the flames. Stupid fuckers like light, but hate fire. Too bad for them, they like the light more than they hate the fire. Moving on."

"Arbok. Rare as hell, thank God. We can handle an Arbok pretty easily, but if anyone gets bit, you're dead. End of story. Don't get bit. One of these ugly fuckers shows up, it gets the _kill-it-kill-it-kill-it-kill-it_ panic treatment. We hit it with everything we have, and put it down as fast as possible."

"Ekans. Minor concern. We hear the rattle, we get the fuck out. They're not as aggressive as the Arboks, so we will take them up on their warning."

"Ursaring. Not a common sight in the plains, but way too dangerous to not consider. These guys can kill a Nidoking well before dying from the Nidoking's venom. Slow, pretty damn tough, and powerful as hell. Evil attitudes. Aggressive as fuck. Claws the size of bananas, and teeth that can chomp through 22-gauge steel plate. We see one of these things coming for us, Riot is coming out as a priority. As soon as the Ursaring is on the ground, we hit it HARD. I don't want it getting back up. You let me do the finisher if the mon can't. Vauban can pin one down for a few seconds, and then I'll move in to ventilate his kidneys."

"Tauros. There are only a few of these guys in Viridian, normally moving in herds across the plains. They'll leave us alone if we leave them alone. Leave the fucking Tauros alone."

"Fearow. Nasty bastards with that beak, but one knife stroke will take their heads clean off. One of these fuckers starts harassing us, we'll cook his ass for dinner."

"Raticate. These guys can gnaw your leg off in as little as three seconds. Small, fast, and delicate. They'll normally only attack if you step on their nests first, so try to avoid doing that. If you see what looks like a mound of hay and random shit, do not kick it."

"Swalot. Minor concern. If you see a purple puddle on the ground, don't step on it. Otherwise you'll have to hold your breath for about a half-an-hour while we cut it open trying to get your ass out."

"That about covers all the indigenous species. Everything listed is a Delta-Two or higher, so they all have the capacity to kill humans quite quickly. Lets try to keep that from happening. Anyone have a species that they're concerned about? Pete! Spit it out."

"Pidgeotto?" Pete asked. I snorted.

"Throw a rock at it, watch it flee. Any real concerns? Amber?"

"What about Kangaskhan? I know there's no-"

"Oh please, Amber. Quit wasting my time. There have been sightings of Kangaskhan in Viridian for hundreds of years and not one credible report. There are no fucking Kangaskhans in Viridian. And even if there were, I'd be about as worried about them as the Tauros. Carlos, you next."

"Stantler."

"Good call, Number two. Yeah, Stantler are not too terribly common during the Nido season, but if we do come across one, we are engaging to kill. They are territorial and ripe with attitude. Do not get stomped on, those hooves will break more than bones. Brenda?"

"Sandslash?"

"Fuck, I can't believe that I forgot about those. Thank you, Brenda. Yes, Sandslash. These guys are minorly territorial, and all about the ambush. If their first strike misses, they will withdraw. They won't chase unwilling opponents very far, but if that first attack hits you… Don't let those claws hit you. They'll punch right through your abdomen and then eviscerate you with a twitch. Look for dirt mounds, and AVOID them. We don't want to piss off a Sandslash. Anything else? Erin, you got anything?"

"Jigglypuff?"

"Don't you even fucking joke around with me. We better not fucking run into a psychotic Jigglypuff. One of those fucking things will put us to sleep before we can even draw our knives, and then we'll be lucky if we still have our natural skin and internal organs when we wake up. I do not want to wear Amber's face inside out for the rest of my newly-unnatural life. Do not jinx us, Erin."

...

"Okay, that is the mon addressed. Now we need discuss kit loadouts. We're all carrying anti-venom, and booster tablets. There is too much risk of poisoning posed by the Nidos for us not to pack extra anti-venom. Brenda is going to be carrying a fully decked out medical kit. If we need to perform an amputation out on the plains, we have both the skills and tech required to do so. None of us are going to be wearing a full hard kit. Too much weight, and unnecessary for our avoidance and flight approach. That said, we will be putting on leg and arm protection. It will keep a Nidorino's horn from penetrating our extremities. Beyond those specifics, we're carrying normal expedition rigs, and splitting the weight evenly between every unit. We will be carrying enough food for three days, just in case something happens. But we are coming back to Frontier Charlie tonight, so that we can take part in the Evening Chorus. We're not dawdling on the plains, Echo. We're getting basic info for Command, and then we're heading back home. We will be going about fourteen klicks deep, bare minimum. Now go pack your rigs. I'll meet you all out by the gate." I gave the order, and began to fold up the map. Echo slowly proceeded to Armory in order to pick out their body armor. Brenda, Pete, and me had already loaded most of everyone's kits. We had to split up some of Erin's instruments among the rest of the unit, just because Erin was gonna need a lot of them. Command had hopes that by the end of this mission, we'd have enough info to decide on whether or not to proceed with the Trans Delta-Charlie road.

I wondered why the Colonel had decided to accelerate our advance. I had a sneaking suspicion that it might have had something to do with the slaying of the Nidoqueen. Wiping out a Delta-Three on our first day in the Frontier might have given the Colonel a bit too much confidence. I personally did not feel that Echo was ready for the Long Sway. Though truth be told, the Long Sway wasn't any more dangerous than the Frontier five-hundred meters beyond Frontier Charlie's walls, so technically, it was just another expedition into hostile land.

But for me… The Long Sway was a land of foul memories. And I hoped that it was just those memories upsetting my gut.

Brenda and Erin were both beside me when I left the bunker. I called on Cortez as soon as we made the gate. Roughly ten minutes later, the rest of Echo joined us. And as nervous as Echo was to see that gate open, it was nothing compared to the dread I felt when we finally left the trees and stared across the tall grasslands of the Long Sway.

…

"It's so quiet." Brenda whispered when we had passed about a klick deep into Long Sway. I kicked a Nincada out of the mud, and stomped on its fourth-meter wide rocky head for good measure. Then I let it go. The giant bug was wounded but still very much alive. It scurried off into the grass, hissing and spitting the whole way.

"Better?" I asked my startled unit. They had no idea that all the weird muddy bumps we'd been walking past were sleeping mon.

"Nincada are of minor concerns. Timid as they get, but at night they have a nasty gimmick. We don't want to be sleeping anywhere near them, unless you're fond of waking up to a proboscis sucking the blood right out of your heart." I stepped over the next Nincada I found. I didn't need to endure myself to every one of them. For whatever reason, my Squad was being really careful around the muddy bumps now.

Cortez paused ahead. I caught up to my hound as quickly as I could.

"Smell a threat?" I asked Cortez. Cortez was too busy whiffing the air to give me the signal. After a moment Cortez pivoted eastwards, lifted his paw, and dropped it instantly while raising his tail.

"Plot a route around them, Cortez. Whatever it is, I don't want to piss it off." Cortez complied, but he seemed hesitant about our new route. He kept on stopping to sniff at the ground.

I wasn't bitching. Cortez was our best tool out here, and he was doing a bang up job getting us through the Frontier. I soon found out why Cortez had been taking this new route slowly.

"We're walking through a Swalot field." I informed my Squad casually. I'd just seen one of the purple oozes myself, and then noticed another three close to the first one. Everybody was watching their feet now. Truth be told, I was comforted by Cortez's way of heading. If something was following us, it would have to navigate through this field of leaping stomachs like Cortez was. But Cortez was a Pathfinder. He had not only the devices to do the job, but he had undergone a training regimen that nature could never provide.

In short, this Swalot field presented us with an advantage.

"Do not step in any purple shit. Those things are a bitch to cut open. I do not want to end up smelling of Swalot because I had to save one of your dumbasses from getting digested." I grumbled to my Squad. My cold attitude might have seemed callous, but by implying that we were not currently in any real danger, I could keep my Squad from panicking.

"Keep up the good work, Cortez. Two more klicks in, and then we need to find a place for Erin to set-up shop."

Cortez found us a Swalot free rise two klicks later. Erin set up his equipment, and the rest of the unit kept watch for any movement in the tall grass.

"How many more of these stops do we have to make?" Pete asked in shaky voice.

"Just two more, Pete. One at the eight klick point, and another at the fourteen klick point." I answered softly. Pete swallowed.

"So far just Nincadas and Swalots. Did you mark down their positions for Command, Erin?" I turned to our navigations expert, who was busy trying to calculate the rise of the plain.

"Yeah, I put them down on the map. Are we going to have to blowtorch them later?" Erin asked. I just snorted.

"Not Echo's jurisdiction. Command will leave that up to the Hades Division. They'll want to prioritize the Nincada, just because those fuckers will tear up a road with all their burrowing." I replied. Carlos looked over at me.

"We've been stationary for about a half-an-hour now. How much longer is this gonna take?" Carlos asked.

"Erin? How much longer do you need?" I asked.

"Just let me finish laying out the yaw, and then I'll leave all the final calculations for the safety of Frontier Charlie. Another five minutes is all I need." Erin answered. I nodded, and turned to my Squad.

"Pack up anything you unloaded. We book it in five."

The way towards Marker two was thankfully uneventful. We stumbled across a lone Nidorina with an early litter of Nidorans, probably sired by a Nidoking. We let them go. Neither the mama nor the pups wanted anything to do with us, and that was just fine by me.

"They're kinda cute at that skittish age, aren't they?" I asked Brenda as one of the female Nidorans tumbled onto her side, after slipping in her haste to get away from us. Brenda swallowed. I knew what she was remembering in regards to me and Nidorans. Oh well. Just another part of wearing the uniform.

"Come on, Echo. This show is over."

We didn't run into anything else after that, though Cortez had to adjust his heading twice because of detected threats. It wasn't until we actually made the eight klick point that we had our first hostile encounter.

It was just a Fearow, and he made the mistake of buzzing over before attacking. We had plenty of time to form up and draw knives before he came back for a strafing run. The Fearow got one missed lunge in before Carlos's knife slit the bird from sternum to rectum. The fucker crash landed, and flopped to his feet, before flying off; moaning. We didn't pursue. There was no reason to. The Fearow wasn't gonna live for much longer with half of his insides hanging out.

"Nicely done, Carlos. Keep up the good work, Infantry." I congratulated my number two for his initiative, and a shaken Carlos was left grinning like he'd just slain a Delta-Three. I was not going to shoot him down in his moment of triumph. Carlos earned his position as Echo's current hero, and I was not about to kill that morale boost.

"Well, now that the Fearow has been dealt with, you wanna get set-up, Erin?" Erin's only answer was to drop a tripod, and wave Pete over to record his numbers.

That was when I noticed Cortez. He was giving me the follow signal.

"Hey, Bird-Slayer." I mocked Carlos when I called out to him.

"Yes, Bastard?" Carlos asked. I jerked my head over to Cortez.

"The mutt and I are gonna go do a quick sweep of the perimeter. You stay guard over the rest of unit. We're not going far, so don't start crying." My belittling was doing its job just dandy. A beaming Carlos gave me the yes-sir, before I headed off with Cortez.

"So what did you find, dog?" I asked as Cortez led me away from the Squad. His answer came soon enough.

"-Holy shit..."

...

"Hey, Echo." I came back to the Squad barely three minutes later.

"Guess what Cortez found." I said, tossing said find on the ground. Everybody backed up quick.

"It's dead, Echo. If you couldn't tell…" I was fighting back a chuckle. Amber overcame the shock, and spoke up first.

"Is that- Is that a Nidoking?" Amber whimpered. I laughed.

"It's a Nidoking's head, Amber. Just the head." I corrected.

It was just a head.

"You know what this means, Rangers?" I asked, feeling better already. Nobody could pry their eyes away from that rotting head.

"One less Nidoking to worry about, and if this sucker was part of a Pack, that Pack is no longer organised. Meaning that they either disbanded or killed each other off. Which means one less Pack of Delta-Threes for us to worry about." I informed my unit with closest thing I could display to joy right now.

Smugness.

"Its horn is broken…" Pete murmured, I looked back at the head. I hadn't really paid too much attention to it before, but now that Pete mentioned it…

"That is kinda odd…" I muttered. Everybody looked up at me.

"Why is it odd?" Brenda asked, growing worried. I just shrugged.

"There isn't much in Viridian that can snap a Nidoking's horn. I mean not unless they're trying to snap that horn off, but… Mon just don't typically try crippling shit like that…" Now I was regarding the head with suspicion.

"It might have broken off in a fight, but again… What could snap a horn that can punch through stone…" I swallowed. There was something fishy about this head.

"Ursaring?" Carlos asked. I worked my mouth.

"It is possible. Ursaring are known for ripping limbs off of Nidoking, so maybe…" I pondered on it.

"Do they also rip heads off?" Erin asked. I bounced on the heels of my feet.

"...Not that I've ever heard of. This guy looks he went through the mill before his head came off. Look at him. The entire left side of his face is chewed to shit…" I muttered.

"That abrasion runs straight down from the left ear to the throat, and continues on past the stump. That means the wound was inflicted before decapitation, and judging from the condition of the abrasion and the stump… They were inflicted around the same time." Brenda gave us her medical evaluation. Now even I was feeling uneasy.

"...What could fuck up a Nidoking so fucking completely?" I muttered.

"Maybe its Pack?" Carlos threw in. I shook my head.

"There would have been a corpse to go along with this head. Nidoking gouge each other to death, not dismember." I kicked the head over, looking for some kind of clue.

"...It wasn't ripped off…" Brenda sounded like she was going to be sick. She was looking at the same marks that I was.

"-It was chewed off." I hissed. Everybody looked up at me. I was circling that head, trying to add up whatever I was missing.

"There isn't a damn thing in Viridian's roster that could do this…" I murmured. The Rangers had been fighting everything in Viridian long enough to know what killed in what way. Nothing I knew of could do this.

"Look at the size of those puncture marks. Big teeth made those. Big teeth means big mon. Nidoking is Viridian's biggest mon… What the hell killed this thing?" I was struggling for an answer. I just couldn't find one.

"Maybe a Trainer flew over the walls and brought along a big mon for a Safari?" Erin suggested.

"...Hmm. Wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened… Cortez? What do you think?" I turned to my silent Hunter-Killer for a second opinion. Maybe his nose had picked up something that our eyes had missed.

Cortez raised his right paw, and held it steady.

Then he dropped it.

"Cortez says 'no,' Erin. Good theory though." I looked at my dog curiously.

"Cortez? Is this something that we need to follow up on?" I asked. A look of fear overcame my dog, damn near choking me. But Cortez raised a steady paw.

And flicked it twice.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! You are not letting Cortez make that call, are you Bastard?" Amber was on her feet and booking it right for me.

"Amber, this is big. I suspect it, and Cortez just confirmed it. The Rangers need to know what is out here. This could affect a lot more than just a road." I said it straight.

"Bastard, whatever is out here, it made potage out of a Goddamn Nidoking! And you want to go _looking_ for it?" Carlos put himself right next to Amber. I reached for my radio.

"Command, this is Echo Commander. We just located a Nidoking's head eight klicks deep into the Long Sway, four klicks east of the Sung Ursa. The body is no where in sight. Markings on the back of the neck suggest mastication. Horn is snapped in two. Echo is willing to investigate. Awaiting your decision. Over." I reported into my radio.

"-You're fucking crazy!"

"Echo Commander, this is Command, standby. Transferring request to Mission Control. Hold location and await Mission Control's decision. Over."

"Roger that, Command. Over."

"Bastard, you are not doing this to us-" My backhand shut Amber up quick. Everybody stood back. The look in my eye meant that there was no delegation. We were in an a state of emergency right now, and I was not putting up with this Walkout shit. I was showing my Echo the Veteran side of me. The do or die side.

"Echo Commander, this is Mission Control. Bastard, your request has been approved. Find whatever this is, and report its identity and location to Command as soon as it is feasible to do so. Do not engage, I repeat, do not engage. Aerial Units are on standby. We will support Echo if need be, but do be aware… We cannot guarantee intervention. Do you copy, Bastard? Over."

"Loud and clear, Trish. Mission is a go. Echo is heading for the Brink. Keep this channel open to priority hails. Over." I cut the feed and looked up at my unit.

"Echo, we are already in deep. I need your heads clear, right this Goddamn second. We are not engaging a Tango. We are identifying a threat. Silence and awareness is key. Follow my lead, and I will get us all back home safely. Fuck this up, and I cannot guarantee that any one of us are going to survive. You are Walkouts, not Vets. This is why we are going in extra careful." I laid it out for all of them there. Everybody was quaking.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Echo. This is effectively an S-rank mission. Now I have done a hundred-and-seventy-three S-rank missions. You can all draw on my well of experience, or you can bitch and moan about your own inadequacy. Either way, we are going. Now buck up, all of you, and get into formation. Cortez-" I turned from my terrified Squad and faced my reliable hound.

"I want you twenty-meters on pole. Take it slowly. We are not racing for a fire. Echo, fall in. I'm taking point. Carlos you're rear guard. Pete, Amber, you're flank. Erin, Brenda, you're support. Eyes fixed on your fields of vision. Shoulder tap alerts. Keep those eyes open, and those brains cooking. Get those pokeballs positioned favorably. Hands on knives now." I was barking orders in the most serious voice any of my Unit had heard me use yet. They knew better than to question or delay. Echo formed up according to my specifications, and every knife's hilt was grasped.

"Cortez, take pole." I ordered, and my hound sniffed out a wary twenty meters.

"Advance, Echo." I took the first firm step, and a nervous falling of feet followed me.

…

Cortez was covering ground quickly. Knowing his level of thoroughness, I was left to assume he had a strong lead, and there wasn't much around to warrant slowing us down.

This was bad news. Whatever we were following had either killed or scared off all other forms of competition. And after seeing its handiwork regarding Nidoking…

...Yeah, we were taking it careful.

Two klicks into the pursuit, and we began to pick up a foul smell. Rot. Death. Something had died nearby.

As it turned out…

-Somethings.

We walked right past half a Nidorina, and not even forty meters beyond that, we found the rattletails of roughly nine Ekans.

Nothing other than their rattletails.

"Something is very hungry…" I murmured when we came across a Swalot, mauled to death. You had to be fucking crazy desperate to try and eat one of those nasty things. Whatever mauled the Swalot had learned why you didn't want to eat a Swalot, just a bit too late.

Too late for the Swalot, that is.

The further we followed Cortez in, the more dead and dismembered things we came across. I froze solid when I saw what I thought was Nidoking laying in the grass.

Then I saw that it was just a Nidoking, minus an arm and torso.

"We are walking through somebody's larder. Nothing leaves food out to spoil like this…" I said when we trapsed through a bloody mess of feathers. The biggest pieces, the beak and talons, informed us that it used to be a Fearow.

"Can you smell that?" I asked Brenda, who stood right behind me. Brenda was trying not to gag on the stench. Their was a tinge of body odor and excrement fouling the air along with the rot.

"We're getting close…"

Cortez came to a dead stop, just twenty meters ahead of me, and hunkered low in the slowest means that I'd ever seen a mon use. I swallowed hard. Something was wrong.

"Give me ten seconds, Echo. I am going up to Cortez. Proceed to my location if I fail to give any indication not to follow." I whispered back to my unit.

"Carlos, you take over point. Erin, you're rear guard. Stay low and silent." I crouched down and moved to Cortez's location, as quickly and as quietly as I could. After I had crossed the better part of fifteen meters, I did notice something odd about my dog.

Cortez was shaking like a leaf.

"...Cortez…" I whispered his name just as I put a steady hand on his rump. The pooch twitched and swallowed. I moved up to a clearer vantage point.

Then I heard the breathing. I froze solid. I just listened. Slow, deep intakes. Heavy, quick outbreaths. Long silent pauses in between.

Snoring.

I looked over the brush that Cortez was using for cover.

And then I felt my bowels loosen.

Thirty meters ahead.

Sleeping off a feast.

Laying down in pile of rotting Nidokings.

Oh.

God.

No.

"Bastard-" My hand almost took Carlos to the ground when it covered his mouth. All of Echo was right behind him.

I'd forgotten to signal.

We needed to retreat.

Now.

"What is it?" Brenda looked at my pale face with a shudder. My mouth was open, and I was panting in long shallow breaths. I closed my mouth and swallowed my dry tongue. Removing my hand from Carlos's face, I fell on my ass.

"We have a Snorlax…" My voice trembled in a whisper.

Everyone one of my Rangers turned fucking white.

…

"You gotta be shitting me…" Carlos sounded like he was gonna puke. My chest was tighter than a nun's pussy.

"...Uhg…" Pete summed up my feelings on the matter quite eloquently.

"...How did it get in Viridian?" Brenda was as white as a sheet.

"Whiteout." I whispered, training taking over for my malfunctioning brain.

"...Whiteout?" Erin choked. My teeth were being ground into dust.

Fucking. _Walkouts._

"Absolute silence. No radios, no talking, no farting." I hissed, trying to keep my voice as low as possible.

"Whiteout. Sure. I'll go with that." Amber was seconds away from snapping. So was I. I had the perfect excuse to punch her in the mouth, but if she made so much as a squeak…

We were all dead.

"Amber. Listen. To me. Carefully." The Fucking Bastard was speaking, and all ears were listening.

"I've. _Been dying._ to slit. your throat. Calm it the fuck down. Or I will. Slit. Your fucking throat." The Fucking Bastard wasn't losing the reigns on this mission. Amber shut her fucking anorexic mouth, and for a solid minute-

-The Whiteout order was observed.

The Snorlax shifted its bulk, and my entire unit jumped. Myself included. False alarm.

Holy _fuck_. My hands were shaking _that much?_

"Okay. Here's the plan. We're falling back. _Quietly._ Nobody touches their radio until we have five klicks between us and the Snorlax. Copy?" I raised two fingers, and angled them sideways, jabbing twice. My unit looked at me, utterly dumbfounded.

 _Mother. Fucking._

 _WALKOUTS._

"That's a roger from your asses. Goddamn, I miss working with the Vets…" A shuddering breath met my chattering teeth. The Snorlax burped. It sounded like a snare drum getting hit with a sledgehammer. Only a lot more wet.

"Carlos, you and Pete take point in the retreat. Amber, you're right behind them. Erin, Brenda, you're flank. I'm on the rear. Cortez." I looked from my unit to my stiff and silent hound, feeling so fucking grateful that of all the Growlithes in the world; mine was the quietest.

"Cortez- You find us a quick, quiet, route. I want you ten meters ahead of Carlos. Don't fuck me up, Cortez. I'm counting on you." My harsh whisper triggered something in Cortez's eyes. Had I the state of mind, I might have reflected on it. But when a Snorlax is laying thirty meters due east of your location…

You don't know what the fuck a state of mind is.

"Okay, We're doing it now. Slowly... and quietly..." Cortez took pole, and then Carlos and Pete just about stepped on him initiating the retreat early.

"Give Cortez space, you idiots! Let him find the route before you step on something _loud._ " I damn near pulled out my knife when I hissed those words. I was never going to work with Walkouts again. As soon as we got back to base, I was slitting every one of my squad members' throats. Starting with Amber.

"Okay. Thataboy." Cortez had found us a path, and his stance was telling us to follow.

"Now Carlos. Pete. Start walking." The two walkout Rangers moved towards Cortez as slowly as they could. The rest of us followed.

"Keep going, Cortez. Make me proud." Cortez immediately sniffed out another ten meters.

"Make it thirty meters after this, Cortez." My unit was right on top of him. Cortez waited for us to catch up before he sought us out another silent thirty meters. I could have kissed Cortez with tongue right then. This dog was better than I deserved.

"Okay. We're almost to the trees. Just keep your heads on for-" The wind picked up, and blew in an easterly direction.

"You've got to be fucking-" Everybody looked at me like I was insane. That was my outdoor voice.

The wind. Just my fucking luck.

We heard the grunt. And then we heard the roar. The fucking Snorlax had picked up our scent in his sleep. Thank you, _fucking_ wind.

Dreamy time for the fat fuck was over, and so was our subtle retreat.

"RUN!" I shouted as loudly as I could.

…

You would never believe that an animal that size could move that fast. As far as pokemon are concerned, a Snorlax's speed is classified somewhere between snails and tortoises.

But compared to humans?

We're the fucking amoebas in the speed department.

My first move was to grab Carlos's pokeball. Out came a Siege Class Rhyhorn with enough power to charge straight through a reinforced concrete wall without losing inertia.

"RIOT! ENGAGE TANGO! HEAVY MASS! CHARGE!" It didn't matter that Riot wasn't my mon. He recognised a command when he fucking heard it. To my eternal disgust, that amazing Rhyhorn had been partnered to a Walkout.

Riot didn't waste a fucking second of my life. That Rhyhorn lowered his head with a rumble and broke into a fucking gallop. Two and a half tonnes of angry fucking Rhyhorn barreling straight at a twenty-one tonne Snorlax, just pulling itself to its feet. I knew exactly what was going to happen to Riot when I gave that order.

Riot slammed right into the Snorlax moving at roughly forty klicks an hour. And all it did to the Snorlax was make it belch. The Snorlax got both fat paws on Riot, and in one of the most gruesome and terrifying displays I've seen in the Rangers yet-

That Snorlax picked up Riot like a Goddamn toddler would with a kitten-

-and then he bit that doomed Rhyhorn's fucking head off.

"TRUCK IT RANGERS! MOVE-MOVE-MOVE!" The Snorlax threw Riot's headless thrashing corpse aside. Not good. I needed Riot to buy us more time than that. But the Rhyhorn wasn't going anywhere. And there were six juicy Rangers just a casual stroll away.

My unit went into utter disarray. There wasn't enough wits between us to even figure out how to strike a match.

We were running for our fucking lives, and only one person in our whole unit had enough training to deal with this type of situation.

Vauban was out in a flash, I was barking orders to Cortez to find us a fast fucking route, silence be damned. My Ranger's were getting their asses chewed out for breaking formation, follow that fucking dog and don't fucking stop moving. We hadn't even crossed more than thirty meters before my unit was back in formation and my radio was pressed up against my chin.

"ECHO SQUAD TO COMMAND, WE ARE ENGAGED WITH A DELTA-FIVE, I REPEAT WE ARE ENGAGED WITH A DELTA-FIVE! DO YOU COPY, OVER?!" I couldn't have lowered my voice even if I had wanted to.

"Echo Squad, This is Command. Did you call in a Delta-Five? Confirm, over."

"CONFIRMED, WE ARE CODE RED ACROSS THE BOARD, DELTA-FIVE! BLACK HANDLE! IT'S A SNORLAX COMMAND! OVER!"

"Echo Squad, Confirm Black Handle, over."

"BLACK HANDLE CONFIRMED, COMMAND! FUCK YOU WALKOUT, OVER!" Great. Even the radio operator was a fucking Walkout. Confirm Black Handle my ass. They should've just punched in the requisition when I said "Snorlax."

"Transfering Black Handle request, Echo Squad. Over."

"OH FUCK ME! CORTEZ! WE'RE HEADING FOR THE FUCKING RIVER! ADJUST HEADING! SOUTH EAST! ON THE DOUBLE!" It wasn't Cortez's fault for leading us astray. It was his third day as a Ranger and he was in unfamiliar territory.

And he was being chased by a fucking Snorlax. I almost stopped running cold when I realized that Cortez was still leading us even though he had the speed to save his own skin.

I fucking love my dog.

"Echo Squad, this is the Colonel. Sit-rep Bastard, over."

"COLONEL, THIS IS BASTARD, SIT-REP FUBAR! WE ARE ELEVEN KLICKS NORTH OF FRONTIER CHARLIE, TWO KLICKS EAST OF THE SUNG BEND! COURSE UNKNOWN! WE ARE BEING PURSUED BY A FUCKING SNORLAX, OVER!" Finally, a fucking Ranger was talking to me.

"Listen closely, Bastard. Black Handle is initiated. Blackhats inbound. Team Seven has been deployed from Cerulean. ETA in eighteen minutes. What's your contingency? Over."

The fucking Blackhats. I almost felt a ray of hope shining when I heard that the Blackhats were the ones coming to save our bacon. And then I heard the ETA. We were fucked.

"ANY AVAILABLE UNITS IN OUR SECTOR CAPABLE OF ENGAGING A DELTA-FIVE? REQUESTING ASSIST, OVER!" I don't even know why I asked.

We didn't have a Delta-Five Counter Unit in the entire Viridian/Pewter District. Darwin was the closest thing Viridian had to a D5CU, and that Magikarp still needed to evolve first.

"That's a negative, Bastard. You're on your own. Over."

No. I wasn't on my own. I had five Walkouts running for their fucking lives. My Walkouts. My Unit. My Echo Squad.

My responsibility.

"Copy that, Command. Formulating contingency, over." The Fucking Bastard went into mental overdrive. We had a lead on the Snorlax, but we could barely stay ahead of it. We would be dead on our feet in five minutes if we kept running like this.

"SHED THE FUCKING GEAR, RANGERS! LIGHTEN THE FUCK UP!" My Rangers struggled to loosen their packs as I unfastened mine and lost it like an ex's photo.

Problem. A Snorlax could run at top speed for nine hours straight.

"CORTEZ! PLOT A ROUTE! NEW HEADING! HEAVY FOLIAGE!"

We needed to slow the Snorlax down. We were tiny in comparison to it, so we could slip through the treeline to slow his advance. But not by much.

Trees didn't stop Snorlaxes from killing Rangers.

"VAUBAN, PREP A FLARE!" My little girl was the only thing that I felt I could depend on. She was just as scared as I was, but we had been together through worlds of shit before.

This was just another day in the Ranger Corps for the Fucking Bastard and his little girl.

I heard the most ungodly sound right behind us. Something between a roar and a greasy fart. I turned around and just about shat my pants. The fucking Snorlax was in full view, and now he'd seen us. He dropped to all fours and broke into a fucking charge, his fat rolls flopping off each other in the most disturbing cacophony to ever spite human ears.

"OH FUCK ME! RANGERS, FULL FUCKING SPEED!" I put down a new level of adrenaline fueled velocity, and my unit answered in kind.

"CORTEZ! CAN YOU SMELL BEEDRILL?!" The hound actually stopped running to give me the signal.

Cortez… You are so much more than I deserve.

"FIND ME A FUCKING HIVE, FULL TILT!" Cortez put down his own speed, and left us in the fucking dust.

"BRING THEM TO ME, CORTEZ! MAKE IT FAST!" I had a plan. A dangerous plan. But when you've got a Snorlax on your ass, suicide is considered a fucking desirable option.

"Echo Squad, this is the Colonel, respond, respond! Over!"

"This is Bastard to the Colonel, we are alive and flying! What's the ETA on those Blackhats? Over."

"They're fifteen minutes out, Bastard. You had better have a handle on this! What's your plan of action? Over." Fifteen minutes? Only three minutes had passed?

Those three fucking minutes felt like a Goddamn eternity.

"TELL THEM THEY'RE GONNA BE LATE TO THE PARTY! WE ARE PISSING OFF THE NEIGHBORHOOD! OVER!"

"Say again, Bastard? Repeat, over." I managed a ragged laugh. Then I heard the howl. Cortez was coming back to me. And he was bringing reinforcements. Now I was smiling.

"WE ARE STARTING A FUCKING FEUD! BEEDRILL VERSUS SNORLAX! BASTARD IS SHAKING THE CRADLE! OVER!"

…

Beedrill. You know that they don't feel fear, right? It's one of the reasons they're such a pain in the ass. Individual Beedrill have absolutely no sense of self preservation. They only live to die for the hive. Beedrills are one of the most common threats the Rangers have to face in Viridian. They're absolutely everywhere, packing a nasty attitude, and they've got themselves three real big stingers to back that attitude up. Those stingers are so big that humans generally don't even have to worry about the venom.

Getting impaled by a Beedrill's twin needles will generally finish you off pretty quickly. And they don't jab just once. You could be cold dead for two hours straight, and the Beedrill that had killed you would still be turning your deceased ass into swiss cheese for another two hours after that.

Beedrill are just plain fucking mean, and whenever I found one on patrol, I had Vauban tear the thing to pieces. But I let them live. Vauban only took the stings and the wings, and then I went over to those crippled Beedrill. And then it was my turn to hate. I would work wonders on their mandibles with my BAMF, all the while they'd be poking at me with the parts missing anatomy.

And when I was done making art out of their faces, I cut them loose. Just so that they could flail their way back home to their hive, just so that one of their Beedrill buddies could put them out of their misery. I let them live in fucking agony. Just because I respect them as much as they respect man. They really like killing us. They think it's so damn fun killing us that after they're done punching a fucking hole through your heart, they can't help but add a few hundred more to every inch of your dead body.

Now I can respect that. That is hate. That is fucking awful hate.

But they don't hate us as much as I hate them.

And for all that hate, this crazy, soon to be dead Ranger was grinning like a motherfucker when Cortez barrelled it outta the bush with a whole Goddamn swarm of Beedrill on his ass.

I found out later that Cortez had torched their fucking pupae hive. I guess Cortez hates Beedrill almost as much as I do.

 _I. Fucking. Love. That. Dog._

…

"CORTEZ! INTERCEPT HEAVY MASS! BREAK OFF ON MY COMMAND!" That was the bravest fucking pokemon I'd ever seen. I still find myself tearing up whenever I remember that moment. That moment. My Cortez. Beedrills all of twenty meters away from going up his ass. One fucking ugly Snorlax dead ahead.

One tiny scarred-up Cortez in the fucking middle.

That fucking dog had a thousand needles of death on pursuit and a lethal mastication on intercept.

And Cortez did not hesitate to carry out my suicidal command for a single fucking second. That scarred dog was a Ranger, through and through.

And I'd only known him for three days.

My dog. Cortez.

You made me so damn proud that day.

"VAUBAN HALT!" Both me and my little girl came to a standstill.

"AIM YOUR BULB! HEAVY MASS! I WANT IT DEAD CENTER!" My Rangers were still running, amazingly still in formation. My respect for them went up to notch one.

"CORTEZ! VAUBAN! ON MY MARK!" Cortez had only seconds left before he would collide with the Snorlax and then the swarm of Beedrill would needle-rape whatever was left of my dog. Almost there, Cortez. You're almost there.

"MARK!" Cortez busted his ass changing direction, a cloud of dirt almost as big as the fucking Snorlax rose from his hasty maneuver. Vauban fired her Phosphorescent Seed right into the cloud of Beedrill, missing every one of them as it flew past.

Perfect.

The Phosphorescent Seed pegged the Snorlax on his flabby chest, and for a moment, I couldn't see a Goddamn thing as that Phosphorescent Seed lit up the whole fucking Viridian Forest despite the youth of day.

When I finally open my eyes again, I couldn't stop laughing.

The Snorlax was lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. And a swarm of roughly forty positively phototactic Beedrill were stinging the shit out of him.

"Cortez, Vauban! Regroup with Echo!" We all hightailed it after our Squad, while the Beedrill worked the Snorlax over. The Snorlax had stopped chasing us to beat off the fucking cloud of pain that had engulfed his ugly fucking person.

I honestly thought he had enough of fucking around with the Rangers.

But that Snorlax was just getting started.

...

I caught up with my winded squad. We could still hear the fat fuck bellowing and the Beedrill buzzing something fierce. The whole unit was exhausted. We pressed on until the sounds of battle was long silent behind us. Then I called a rest. We had to take a breather, even if it was for just one second.

"Bastard to Command. What's the Blackhat's ETA? Over." I gasped into my radio.

"Six minutes out, Bastard. Sit-Rep. Over." The Colonel sounded relieved that I wasn't shouting at him anymore.

"Tables are turned, Command. Delta-Five is marked for engagement. You can't miss him. Tell the Black Hats they're gonna have to mop up a whole helluva-lotta pissed off Beedrill as well. Over." My voice was quivering. I couldn't believe that we'd made it. I was so shaken that I almost gave the weeping Amber a hug. Then I remembered my pride.

"Casualty report, Echo. Over." The Colonel's voice shook me out of it.

"One fucking beautiful Rhyhorn has been decapitated. I will personally write the fucking requisition myself for securing a new Siege Class for Corporal Carlos Garcia. Over." I froze when I heard my own spoken words. And I knew the fucking Colonel did too.

We had just been lethally engaged with a Delta-Five, and we had only lost one easily replaceable mon. Just one measly fucking Rhyhorn.

That was almost Blackhat credentials.

"I expect promotions for myself and all of Echo Squad upon returning to base, Command. Over and out." The Fucking Bastard was telling the Colonel what was what. I felt like I was already wearing a Black Beret.

Cause damn.

I had fucking earned my promotion. And so had my Squad.

Well...

"Command, this is Bastard. Rescinding previous request. Rephrase. Every Ranger in Echo Squad gets promoted except Warrant Officer Amber Hail. Over." Command could hear me smiling when I spoke into that radio.

Even fucking Amber was laughing. I straightened my Squad out with a look.

"Let's get going, Echo. As much as I wanna see the look on that Snorlax's fat face when-"

The fucking forest exploded.

I didn't even know what the fuck was happening. Timber was flying everywhere, and all my stunned brain could do was look for the source.

It was the Goddamn Snorlax.

 _And he was swollen fucking mad._

Getting the shit stung outta him by the Beedrill was not on the menu. Surprise. Course. Bitch.

Oh.

Shit.

"COMMAND-!" That was a far as I got before that fucking freak closed the remaining fifty meters to our location. It happened so fast. I couldn't even process what the fuck was going on.

Carlos was trampled dead.

Pete was screaming his ass off right before the Snorlax bit him in half.

Amber was thrown into the fucking trees like she was a fucking ragdoll.

My hands were on Brenda and Erin's shoulders and I was pulling both of them out of the shock.

We were fucking dead.

"RUUUUN!" I pushed my two remaining Rangers towards the South and kicked their asses when they staggered. Then I turned around and I did the stupidest thing in my whole Goddamn life.

"VAUBAN! CORTEZ! ENGAGE HEAVY MASS!" That was it. This Snorlax was going down.

I booked it past the fucking Snorlax while he choked down what was left of Pete. I ran right into the woods where Amber had landed. She was still alive. And she was a fucking mess. The human frame was not designed for taking that level of abuse.

"ON YOUR FEET RANGER!" I dragged Amber's broken corpse to a standing position. No sooner had I let her go, then she hit the ground again. She wasn't walking outta this. Not on those legs. I whipped out my sidearm.

I put one in Amber's forehead and two in her chest.

It was the only thing I could do for that piece of shit Walkout.

That was the only reason Squad Leaders were given sidearms. It was my fucking duty to kill Amber before that Snorlax did.

And I did my duty without hesitation.

…

I could barely see through my bloody haze. Vauban and Cortez were duking it out with the Snorlax, but he didn't give a shit about the two tiny mon throwing pebbles at his feet. The two Rangers that I had been hell-bent on keeping alive at all costs were already fucking dead. They hadn't even made it sixty meters before that fucking piece of shit Snorlax killed-

"-..."

"And I-"

"...And I-"

"...I can't talk about it anymore-"

"-..."

"-Ohgawd…"

.

.

.

.

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 **Greenback:** Slang for Ranger. Warranted for the color of their Battle Dress; Olive Green. Originally intended to derogatorily refer to lazy Rangers accruing grass stains on the back of their shirts from laying down on the ground for too long, "Greenback" has since been adopted by the Corps and has summarily become a cherished title amongst the Rangers.

 **Blackhat (AKA The Black Berets):** Ranger's Elite Pokemon Slaying Division. The "Black Berets" are the best of the best. Equipped with even more Pokemon derived firepower than any Division in the Military, The Black Berets stand as the greatest vanguards of humanity's continued survival. There are currently eight active Blackhat Teams, with a grand total of 109 members between those eight Teams. The deployment of a single Blackhat Team can even turn the tide against a Lima-One attack.

 **Walkout:** Derogatory term for a Ranger who makes regular use of their leave. Typically joins the Corps with the sole ambition of securing the G.I. Bill's benefits. Given the almost religious commitment to the safety of humanity the more experienced Rangers display, Walkouts are often held in contempt by the elites. Walkouts are regarded as undisciplined, unmotivated, and ignorant by the Veterans. Walkouts. Fucking spineless pussies everyone of them.

 **Sandz:** Standard unit of currency minted by Johto and Kanto's Indigo Confederacy Central Government.

 **Delta-Five:** Rangers use a ranking system for identifying threats similar to the commercial sector's star ranking system. Instead of one-to-five stars, Rangers use one-to-five skulls. Tagged "Delta" for Death. Delta-One is for a Rattata threat level. Delta-Two is for a Beedrill threat level. Delta-Three is for a Nidoking threat level. Delta-Four is for a Rhyperior threat level. Delta-Five is for you're either Blackhat or you're fucked.

 **Black Handle:** Ranger callsign for requesting the Black Berets. Use is explicitly forbidden for any engagements not designated high-priority, or less than contact with a Delta-Five.

 **D3CU/D5CU:** Abbreviation of " **D** elta- **Three C** ounter **U** nit/ **D** elta- **Five C** ounter **U** nit." The best way to counter a Delta-Five is with another Delta-Five, sporting a Ranger designated G.I. barcode tattoo. Thanks to their all-terrain capabilities and nasty attitudes, Rangers prefer the Gyaradosia species as their D5CUs.

 _ **P.S.**_

 _598 F-Bombs have been dropped in the making of this story._


	4. Chapter III: Daedalus Descending

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 **The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero**

 _Written by,_

 **Vile M.F. Slanders**

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 ***T...T...T...T***

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 **V**

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" _ **...A Ranger doesn't wait for a call. A Ranger keeps their eyes on the horizon. And when the storm clouds start rising, a Ranger races the thunder to the rains…"**_ _\- First High Marshal Lilia M. Asimov, Founder of the International Ordained Ranger Corps; her last words recorded before entering the Brink._

 **-v-**

 **Chapter III: Daedalus Descending**

"VAUBAN! FALL BACK TO ME! THEY'RE RETREATING!"

"Come on, girl. Shake it out… They're gone… All gone…"

"-Holy shit…"

"I'm alright, Vauban, I'm alright… Knock it off… Oh my God…"

"...We're still alive…"

"-Wait a minute…"

"Where's the Cap? Where's the Lieutenant?"

"Oh, fuck me…"

"-Oh hell no…"

"-Cap? ...Cap?"

"Heh. Zane… You look like shit, kid…"

"Cap… Your legs…"

"...Yeah. -I know…"

"Oh my God…"

"MAN DOWN! MAN DOWN! TRISH! GET OVER HERE NOW! TRISH!"

"...Heh. Too late for that, Zane… Put the kit back."

"Hold up, Cap. Trish is coming. We'll get you patched up.

"Zane… Just call me Doug. Forget about Captain… Just call me Doug."

"-Captain!"

"Hey, Trish… Heh. Well fuck me… This is what I get… Taking the Fucking Bastard and the one-eyed slut out on Safari in the Long Sway, huh?"

"-Doug, just hold on. Keep those eyes open, Ranger! -I'll get the bleeding to stop..."

"...It was an honor, sir."

"Shut up, Trish! He ain't dead yet!"

"...Zane… Heh. You can't put a bandage over death…"

"-Just hold on, Cap. Just-"

"Let him go, Zane."

"Trish… It's the Cap… He don't die… He's been a Ranger for thirty years! He ain't gonna die now!"

"...Thirty years, huh? Heh. Can't believe I made it that long…"

"Cap, come on man… Just hold on…"

"...Zane… I'm done. This was my last hurrah, kid..."

"-Cap…"

"...Listen, Zane… This is a lesson… And I- I really wish I wasn't the one... -teaching it… to you…"

"-Come on, Doug…"

"...Keep him here, Trish. He needs to know…"

"Will do, Captain."

"...Hey kid, dry those eyes. I had a good haul…"

"Doug, please… Don't do this…"

"I'm not doing it, Zane. It's just happening… Listen… I'm gonna pass out soon… I won't wake up…"

"...Cap…"

"...Just do something for me... would ya, kid?"

"Anything, Cap…"

"...Just keep holding onto my hand until the end… I don't wanna die alone…"

"...Doug…"

"...There are a lot of hopes pinned on you, Zane… Don't give up on the Rangers… We need you, kid..."

"...Doug?"

"-Doug?"

"...Farewell, sir."

"Trish… Is he gonna-?"

"Stay strong, Zane. Honor his memory, and never forget what he taught you."

"Doug, wake up… please wake up…"

"Doug-?"

"-Cap…?"

…

I shot up, gasping. There were sheets wrapped around my body. A mattress under my ass. Plaster walls on all sides, decorated with posters of bikes and bands. Doorways draped in beads. The sound of water falling from a showerhead. It took me moment to remember where I was.

I wasn't in the Long Sway. It wasn't my thirty-sixth mission in the S-ranks.

Doug had been buried less than half a year ago.

And my Echo…

I felt the tears in my eyes. Amber. Pete. Erin. Carlos.

...Brenda…

They had been dead for over three months now… And I was still alive…

"Vauban…?" I moaned through the memory. I heard her get up on the bed. My little girl.

Vauban clambered into my arms, and I buried my face into her bulb. I still had her. My oldest friend. My first Squadmate.

"-Ohgawd…"

…

I had managed to pull myself back together by the time Tammy came out of the shower. She'd missed my episode on account of her commitment to hygiene.

I guess small mercies are still mercies.

"You're awake early." Tammy crawled across the bed to me and Vauban, big teasing smile on her face.

"Old habit." I said gruffly. Tammy just giggled.

"You can take the Ranger out of the uniform, but you'll never take the uniform out of the Ranger, huh?" Tammy nuzzled my ear. I just laughed, even if I didn't feel like I wanted to.

"Speaking of early… You don't have to go to work anytime soon, do you?" I knew that Tammy did. I was grateful that she would be leaving soon. I just wanted to be alone for a little while. The only reason I asked Tammy that question was because I wanted to flatter her.

It worked. Tammy got a guilty look on her face.

"Zane… I'd love to stay…" Tammy started simpering. I snorted.

"Yeah, right… Come on, Officer. You got a duty to uphold. I don't regret that." I gave Tammy the smirk that had moistened a thousand thongs. Part tease, part charm. Half trouble.

All sincerity.

"Oh, my sweet Ranger." Tammy cooed, running a hand over my face. I could feel her fingertips tracing the scars.

"Come on, now. Tammy. This Ranger has a duty to uphold as well." I lifted myself and Vauban off the bed, and made my way towards the bathroom.

"What kind of duty, Zane?" Tammy asked before I had even reached the door.

"The Ranger kind." I shrugged. Tammy blew her lips out loudly behind me, exasperated.

"You know, I got call yesterday… Just before yours." Tammy started. I could hear the mischief in her voice.

"Really? What kind of call?" I pretended to be interested, waiting to hear her out.

Doesn't mean that I was facing her, though.

"It was from a Pokemon Center. In Pewter. They reported that a Ranger had engaged a civilian in a pokemon battle. Which is illegal for a Ranger to do…"

Okay. Now I turned around to face Tammy.

"But when I reported this to a higher office… We got a call from ACE." Tammy was looking at me quizzically.

"Now I don't know what the Spooks told the Chief Commissioner, but after hearing from the Secret Service… We were explicitly forbidden from arresting the Ranger in question." Tammy leaned over the bed, resting her chin on her knuckles.

"Then you called to report civilian interference in Ranger affairs... And I heard the Pokemon Center's lobby music in the background." Tammy's eyes narrowed.

"That is some annoying music." I smiled at her. Tammy was giving me nothing but her raw scrutiny.

"Why did ACE cover for you, Zane? Why is the Secret Service and the Rangers conspiring together?" Tammy asked, with the voice of a brooding Private Eye.

A lousy one. I sighed and pointed to my uniform, draped over Tammy's desk chair.

"Front breast pocket, left side. Tact. pad. Or Pokedex. I don't rightly know what it is yet." Tammy gave me a strange look accompanied by a quirked eyebrow, before she fished through my uniform's specified pocket.

A Ranger with a Pokedex? Yeah, that was something queer.

"This… is a Pokedex?" Tammy pulled out something quite a bit beefier than the standard Pokedex. Actually, it was a modified Military issued Tactical Pad that the Ranger Techs had frankensteined with a Pokedex.

"Custom. It doubles as a hammer and a flotation device." I informed Tammy with a smile. Tammy tried to access it. It locked her out immediately. Then Tammy tried to bypass the access key. It shut off before before she could even get into the login screen.

"That's some pretty robust security systems for a Pokedex." Tammy was looking at me rather suspiciously.

"Military tech. Bring it here." I grunted smugly. Tammy took a good look at the green brick in her hands.

"You could hurt somebody with this thing… Is it really a Pokedex?" Tammy hefted the Tact. Pad, her expression was rather concerned when she brought it over to me.

"Who gives a damn about it being used as a weapon? I'm more concerned about dropping it on my toes." I chuckled as I took the device. I placed all five fingertips from my left hand onto the screen. The device required a fifteen second bio-confirmation before rescinding lockdown. I leaned away from Tammy, and then I entered the passphrase.

 _The Bastard King._

The device opened up. I accessed my Trainer's Licence. Then I let Tammy take a look.

"What the hell is going on?" Tammy's mouth dropped open.

It was a League approved Licence, with my Ranger identification as the backdrop. But my serial number was headed by three big letters.

 _ACE._

"High Command had to jump through some loopholes in order to get me into the League. I am certified for competition, as well as for Ranger Service." I let Tammy drink in this impossible License.

"So are you ACE, or a Ranger?" Tammy was looking at me something weird.

"If I was a Spook, do you think that I'd show you that much?" I asked. Tammy swallowed and shook her head.

"So what are you then?" Tammy asked. Her voice had slight tone of accusation.

"I'm the first League certified Ranger." I grumbled. I didn't sound too happy about it.

Probably because I wasn't.

"And they let you use Vauban for competition?" Tammy was incredulous.

"I have three official G.I. mon. All of them are certified for competition." I replied. Tammy made another face.

"What happens when they kill somebody's pokemon in a restricted format?" Tammy asked darkly.

"They had better not." I looked down at the Vauban resting in the crook of my arm. Vauban wheezed up at me, all happy for being acknowledged. Tammy giggled. It was hard for most people to believe that Vauban was a service mon.

She was just too damn cute.

"So why are you competing?" Tammy asked. I smirked.

"That's classified."

"Really?" Tammy asked, jaw dropping again.

"Maybe. I'm not allowed to tell." I teased. Tammy overcame her awe and punched me in the arm. Given that she was a trained Officer of the Law, it was no light tab.

"Careful, baby. Shit." I chuckled. Tammy just sighed, and started fiddling with her hair.

"I have to get ready for work now. You're welcome to stay here if you want. You know where the spare key is?" Tammy asked.

"Yep. And if not, I know how to climb up to the roof. Those skylights don't look like they'd be too difficult to jimmy loose." I smiled at her.

"Don't you dare climb up there, Ranger. This is civilization. We use doors here." Tammy was being serious, which was appropriate.

Because I was too.

"Doors. Fuck. Well, if you don't mind. -I'm gonna go get cleaned up." I grunted. I got myself one hell of a desirable leer as I turned around and entered the bathroom.

...

I got myself and my dirty little girl cleaned. Rangers are creatures of efficiency, so when I stepped under that shower head, Vauban was still tucked under one arm. I had to keep the temperature low for her. Vauban gets queasy if she is exposed to too much hot water. Even though my starvation discipline had emptied her stomach of anything that I might end up wearing, I still thought it best to be considerate of her comfort. I prioritized washing Vauban before myself. I gave her a thorough lather followed by a vigorous scrubbing all chased with a rinse.

Then I kicked her pudgy ass out of the shower and cranked up the heat.

Once I'd washed off all of the fun from last night, I went to the mirror to shave. I stared at my reflection for bit. Not because of vanity. Far from it.

I was staring at the man in mirror, trying to figure how he was still alive.

...

...I suppose that I should give you the abridged version.

On what that Snorlax did to me.

He mauled me. Spat me out twice just so that he could chew on opposite ends, then he roared in the face of the dying Ranger who had put him through so much pain.

Mon aren't dumb beasts. That Snorlax knew who I was. The vindictive asshole wanted me to suffer for what I put him through. The Snorlax wasn't too happy when I recalled Vauban and Cortez before he could kill them. None too happy at all. So he gave me their punishments as well.

And it cost him.

Captain Lewis, Advance Scout of Blackhat Team Seven caught up with my mastication three minutes ahead of Team Seven's ETA. Her Gyarados gave the Snorlax a taste of his own medicine, chomping down on the Snorlax's head with a huge blue mouth. The Snorlax dropped my ruined ass, and Captain Lewis's Absol dragged me away from the fight.

Captain Lewis killed the Snorlax in twenty seconds flat. She had her Scizor cut the Snorlax's gut open in less than ten seconds after that. They pilfered his insides for any survivors, hoping that somebody had gotten lucky and had been swallowed whole.

But luck wasn't exactly on Echo's side that day.

The rest of Team Seven arrived after Captain Lewis had begun to administer basic first aid to the sole survivor. Me. They all thought that was going to die. I probably thought that I was going to die too. I was in a lot pain. So much so, that I couldn't understand what was going on. I was conscious throughout the entirety of it all, just not really coherent.

Captain Lewis kept me alive until the Aerial Units brought a surgeon. Then they sent for another four. I was bleeding in that graveyard for six hours before they finally stabilized my condition enough for me to be transported out of there.

You wouldn't know it, looking at me in a uniform. Just how messed up I am. Tammy got a gander at what my body looks like now. She saw the scars on my torso and arms. She saw what's left of my legs. Though, for all our optical contact last night, Tammy never realized that my left eye is made of glass.

Let's just say, I have a lot in common with my dog now. They ended up using the skin of my ass cheeks to patch up my face. Those surgeons did a damn good job on my face. I've actually been told that I look even better now, than I did back before the Snorlax got me.

But I didn't have enough ass skin to patch up the rest of me. Cosmetics were trivial. They prioritized keeping me alive initially, and when it seemed that they had succeeded in that endeavor, they tried to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.

The surgeons pinned and wired every bone in my chest back into a whole. They stitched and stapled every muscle back into my frame. They just scraped out what remained of my leg bones. Basically just splinters and congealed blood. Of course, they only even bothered removing the mess in my legs because I insisted that they do so. The surgeons presented me with an option. They could amputate my legs or perform an extremely painful procedure that would likely end in amputation anyways. I made my decision. I'd rather die than lose my legs, so they did everything they could to save them. The surgeons pulled it off. They're still legs, just not very good ones. Most of my hips are titanium bracing. The bones in between my hips and feet?

It isn't bone anymore.

I walk with a limp, or I should. But I made an effort to walk normally, conditioned myself into an agonizing compromise. Just so that Command would see an able-bodied Ranger when they looked at me.

It didn't work. For all my faux appearances, I couldn't cover up my new limitations. I can't disguise the limp when I'm running. Not to mention the other details. That Snorlax punctured both of my lungs when he chewed me up, and I get winded like an asthmatic now. His teeth missed my heart by two inches. The Snorlax cracked plenty of my vertebrae, but he failed to sever my spinal cord. Sheer luck saved me from certain death or paralysis. But the rest of me didn't fare much better than that. The surgeons had to reconstruct my shoulders with three separate operations, just so that I could raise my arms above my head. I underwent some of the most invasive and painful physical therapy sessions that you can't even imagine, just so that I could stand on my own two feet again.

I'm a patchwork man, and you can see the seams. I don't even look whole without my shirt on. And all of it hurts, everyday. And it all will, until the day I die.

...How am I still alive?

…

I guess Tammy digs the scars. They don't look surgical, probably because the Snorlax made every necessary and unnecessary incision for the surgeons. I've creeped out some women, just by taking off my uniform.

Tammy though… I guess she appreciates the marks earned from hard service. She had a wild look in her eye after she overcame the shock. She played with every dimpled pit and waxy range, running those soft fingers of hers over my every dead nerve.

I thought it was kinda sweet actually. I felt kinda touched.

And it made the foreplay interesting. Though I don't kiss and tell.

After I had finished smoothing my rugged good looks out, I nudged a napping Vauban with a toe. She passed out on the bathroom mat after I booted her out of my bath. Vauban rose quickly, and looked up at me, hope glowing in those red eyes.

It was breakfast time, and my hungry Vauban hadn't eaten anything since a hasty breakfast the previous morning. Her starvation sentence has been served. I don't need my little girl getting sick from my abuse.

After dressing myself in last night's uniform, I headed out into the big city of Pewter with Vauban in tow. In truth, Pewter really isn't that big. My hometown of Celadon is massive by comparison. But for a Ranger? Any city feels huge after living in the wilderness for three years straight.

Pewter is one of the oldest cities in Kanto. The city started off as a crude fortress roughly eleven hundred years ago, in the Post-Brink Dark Age. The stone walls of Pewter predate every other structure in Kanto, save for the Pre-Brink erected Memorial Tower in Lavender Town. Within these stone walls, one of the first Post-Brink prolific advances that mankind made rekindled the birth of nationalism. It was the descendants of Pewter City that would one day populate the entire Kanto region, and bring about a geographical unity inspired by their shared ancestry. Pewter was nominated to serve as Kanto's Capital City, though Saffron City won on the premise of wealth and influence. Despite this, Pewter City remains an icon to the Kantonese people, for most of us living in this region can trace our lineage back to an ancestor who survived the early Post-Brink in the relative safety of Pewter City's walls.

Though much of Pewter's history was scrapped in favor of progression, the archaic stonewalls of Pewter still stand. The first stone laid to raise Pewter's walls is an honored landmark of the the local community, and a recognised national treasure of the Provincial Kantonese Government. Just read the welcome sign hanging over the city gates for clarification.

"Pewter, the City of the Stone."

No wonder why the local Gym Leaders of Pewter have always favored the Rock-Type Pokemon.

...

Speaking of Gym Leaders, I should probably clarify why this whole League business upsets me so. The League diction is confusing to me. Every aspect of the League Legislation strikes me as backwards and capitalist.

Look, I'm a Ranger. When I engage in a fight, I'm accustomed to fighting for my life. In that kind of a contest, I'll play as dirty as I possibly can in order to _live._ But now…

I gotta deal with some bullshit rules of engagement. Ridiculous safety clauses are enforced throughout the standard restricted competition scene. Just so homicidal monsters don't get seriously injured from competing with one another. It's a bit of an adjustment for me to accept, that we, the human species, are trying to limit the amount of damage inflicted on Pokemon.

I'm used to seeing some pretty nasty shit in my line of work, most of it pertaining to the violence that man and mon meet each other with, so some of the League advocated competition just seems so…

Wrong. Ignorant. Even juvenile.

So why do people protect Pokemon, the vile creatures that are naturally inclined towards killing man? Well, truth be told, domestication has done wonders for curbing certain species of mon's homicidal instincts. Even in the Post-Brink, humanity has exercised its natural disposition for subjecting every aspect of nature to our whims. But we need to remember, domestication doesn't pacify every species of mon. Some species possess an inborn desire to dominate that can only be quelled through years of conditioning. Even then, those mon don't follow orders particularly well, most notably the Dragons. Then there are some mon that would rather destroy everything in existence instead of attempting to coexist with other organisms, like the Ghosts. Either way, the whole domestication of Pokemon has had a rather dire influence on humanity's compassion, and thereby afflicted mankind's mentality. Most human beings, living in the safety of their 'domesticated' cities, are under the illusion that Pokemon are innately timid, or even subservient.

These people are idiots. These people believe that an encounter with a feral Pokemon on the enclosed Routes qualifies as a genuine exchange between naked man and wild mon. The enclosed Routes are populated by only the weakest and most insignificant of feral mon, thanks to the Rangers. If the Rangers ceased to maintain the Routes, 'civilized' people would get to experience the kind of Pokemon that the cities only ever get wind of in a slow news week.

The commercial sector doesn't exactly aid the Rangers in raising awareness either. Just look at our entertainment. Some of the creepy cartoons that we allow our children to watch portrays Pokemon as being goofy and inherently friendly creatures. Not to mention the commercials that advertise the latest Dress-up Clefairy Dolls and Rock-em-Sock-em-Machokes. All of this marketing serves as a dangerous and irresponsible medium that brainwashes our children into believing the commercial sector's fetching fantasy over the lethal reality. Those Clefairy Dolls scare the living shit out of me. Do you know how many cases the Rangers have to deal with _per year_ involving Fairy-Types skinning children alive? Too many.

Are you people insane? Do you really want your children to identify a lunatic Fairy-Type as a friend? For fuck's sake, there are caves in Mount Moon lined with human skin! What the hell is wrong with you people?!

Idiocy aside, I'll move on to the shadiest convenience ever designed by man...

-The Pokedex.

The Pokedex is an advanced piece of technology that every competitive Trainer is legally required to possess, as mandated by League Legislation. So why don't Rangers carry Pokedexes? Because we don't need to. Sure the Species Encyclopedia software sounds useful, but every Ranger has that Encyclopedia grilled into their domes back in the Academy. Primarily because human brains operate faster than electronics can. When a hostile Delta-Three is bearing down on you, you generally have to make some split-second decisions. Guess what's not on the roster of split-second decisions?

Whipping out a Pokedex and wasting your valuable life waiting for the Pokedex to process and identify what is about to kill you.

As for the Pokedex's other features? They're all League orientated. Nothing that Rangers need nor want. For budding Trainers out there, let me enlighten you on the nature of the bureaucracy that you're so hell-bent on joining.

When you first receive your Trainer's License, you will start out with a Novice rank certification. This means that you can deny the Trainer's Eyes clause if your opponent is of a higher rank than you. Trainer's Eyes. Basically when your Pokedex communicates with other Pokedexs in the immediate vicinity, which allows Trainers to pick up on the possibility of competition in the surrounding area. Once two Trainers meet bearing similarly ranked certifications, one or both of the Trainers can call a Trainer's Eyes, which essentially forces the other Trainer into a restricted battle. The Pokedex records when a Trainer's Eyes clause has been instated, and turning down a Trainer's Eyes automatically pilferers your Trainer's Account for what it would have cost you to lose the match in the first place, plus a penalty fee of Five-hundred Sandz. Fudging with the Trainer's Eyes software and hardware on the Pokedex can actually get you arrested. Given that most Trainers rely on the Pokemon Center's facilities for keeping their competition mon fit, Trainers generally don't want to tamper with the Pokedex. Seeing as you must provide your Dex for identification and a _clearance scan_ before receiving a Pokemon Center's services, it isn't too hard for the League to identify and punish hackers. So do be aware of the Trainer's Eyes clause, and the associated inconveniences it conjures. I've heard of marriages being lost over it.

Then there is the Trainer Account. You see, Trainers compete for stakes. And the League likes to get their greedy fingers into this business and enforce their presence with their League Laws and their misleadingly benign Trainer's Eyes feature. Which is why the Pokedex is a mandated requirement for any Trainer seeking to compete within the League.

When you purchase your Pokedex, you must also put down an 'investment' of one-hundred Sandz. This 'investment' is transferred into a personalized League financial shares account, i.e. the Trainer Account. You can't touch that money. Despite your account stating that it is _your_ account, the money actually belongs to the League now. Every time you lose a competitive match, ten percent of your Trainer Account's total balance is awarded to your opponent's Trainer Account. Then you have to add a minimum of twenty percent of the account's lost figure into the winner's pool from your own pocket, i.e. the stakes. Five percent of the total amount awarded to your opponent is automatically 'invested' into their Trainer Account. Never to be touched. All of this is recorded and maintained by the Pokedex and the Trainer's Eyes feature.

As your Trainer Account's balance grows, so to does the size of the stakes you risk forfeiting when you lose a match. Every time your account takes a hit, a certain percentage of your balance ends up in another individual's Trainer Account, and every time the money is transferred, the total sum ending up in the _National Trainer Account's Gross_ increases, i.e. the League's market stocks.

When you look at it, regardless of whether you are winning or losing, you are essentially putting your money straight into the pocket of a League official. But to top it off, you're also acting as a stockbroker, doing everything short of payroll for the League staff.

If your Trainer's Account empties because of one too many loses, and you still want to compete, you have to invest another one-hundred Sandz of your own money into the Trainer Account again. Otherwise, the Trainer's Eyes Pokedex feature will identify you as 'broke,' i.e. not fucking worth battling. And to give the League even more control, stakes must be announced and recorded when using the Trainer's Eyes feature. Though on the plus side for the Trainer community, for a mere five percent of the stakes, this legally guarantees the winner's payout under punishment of embezzlement for the uncooperative loser.

In short, the League is the house, and the house always wins. Sure, some Trainers actually make a pretty decent living off of the League's competition, but all it takes is a couple of losing streaks to set you back to the beginning. I'm fond of gambling myself, but the League's methods are so transparent that it makes me feel like a tool whenever I win a match. Yeah, I get to pocket the majority of the cash, but still…

The League's corporate effort to profit is so tangible that it makes me feel slightly ill.

And there are hundreds of thousands of Trainers out there, all blissfully throwing their money at the League on a daily basis.

No wonder why the Indigo Confederacy's Central Government gives the Congressional Throne to the League Champion. The League Champion is worth more than half of their total annual revenue, not to mention, the League Champion is generally more respected than any other political figurehead.

Let me tell you, all that League money and prestige holds a lot of sway in the Indigo Confederacy, as well as the Trainer community.

Which is the whole reason why High Command wants me sitting on that Throne.

...

I made my way through Pewter, looking for a decent Pokemart. While the Trainer's Mart generally had a pretty good selection of travel food for mon, I wanted something a little more palatable than freeze dried nutriment turds.

Pokemarts are the places to go if you are in the mood for spoiling your despicable little monsters. Pokemarts offer everything from massages and aromatherapy, to grooming and fine monster dining. I normally wouldn't patronize a Pokemart, but I was still wrestling with the guilt of recently beating Vauban. Oh, yeah…

I think I mentioned repeatably that I starved my Squadmate as well, didn't I?

So guilt was the motive. If Command wanted to know why I spent some of my expense account at a Pokemart, I could always cover up my real intentions by stating morale. I'm not too worried about High Command coming down on me for spoiling my mon on the expense account, chiefly because I've been ever the frugal Ranger with it. Last night's dinner was the first meal in five days that didn't involve me tracking food down and killing it first.

So I'm below the budget.

The beautiful thing about most mon is that they can digest just about anything. Most Pokemon are omnivores, and some can even eat shit that nothing else on the planet would ever identify as food. Vauban is in the omnivore class. She prefers decomposing plant matter over meat, but she can metabolise both. Cortez is a solid carnivore though, but I supplement his diet with essential vitamins not commonly found in meat. And Darwin… I could feed Darwin my entire Squad's feces, but I have an aversion to such disgusting forms of sustenance, so Darwin gets whatever leftovers I generate other than excrement.

The Pokemart I found was modest enough. No gaudy callers out front, haranguing me with the deal of the day, and no shady alleyways with suspicious smelling dumpsters anywhere near the establishment. I got a lot of peculiar looks stepping into that Pokemart. I was in uniform, and a Ranger is more disposed towards burning a Pokemart and all its mon inhabitants to the ground than actually patronizing the joint.

But once Vauban made her appearance known in the crook of my arm, the store manager put the fire extinguisher back on its cradle.

"Hello! And what could I get you today… Ranger Zane?" The front clerk swallowed on sight of my badge. I dropped Vauban unceremoniously on the counter. She smiled sheepishly up at the clerk, completely throwing him off after the loud thunk her ass made upon hitting the counter.

"Food for the little green shit, and the rest of my Squad as well." I spoke using my typical 'unfriendly to civilians' voice. The clerk nodded nervously.

"Umm… Would you like to hear the options?" The clerk tried.

"Negative. The Seaweed mulch and Tangela chop for the Bulbasaur. Three pounds. My Growlithe will have the smoked Rattata. One carcass. And I'll need to use your Tank for feeding my... Magikarp. The heavy protein and carbohydrate blend. Forty pounds." I placed my order with a dead face and voice, my cold stare triggering the formation of sweat beads on the clerk's brow. He was surprised when I announced a Magikarp on my Squad, but it was nothing compared to the shock he displayed when I ordered forty pounds of fish flakes.

"...Will you… um... want that for here or to go?" The clerk asked hesitantly.

"For here." I growled.

"We have a-"

"Not interested." I cut the clerk off before he could finish his pitch. Quit wasting my time.

"So that's-"

"Affirmative." I was hissing now. This is why I hate shopping. I placed my damn order, cut the marketing and clarification, now make the shit.

"That will be… twenty-eight Sandz… Ranger-?" The clerk seemed a little concerned about whether or not I intended to pay for the food. He was probably worried that I was going to drag his ass across the counter and remind him that his life should be worth at least twenty-eight Sandz. Instead, I procured my expense account's card, and paid for the meal with money rather than violence.

"Okay. By the way, did you want us to bag up the extra fish food?" The clerk asked.

I just walked off without answering. He would see soon enough why I order forty pounds of fish food for a Magikarp. I made my way over towards the Tanks, and found one large enough to incorporate Darwin's bulk near the grooming center.

"Darwin, report." I released my oversized joke into the Tank. The spill catch's sump pump went into overtime to accommodate for the Tank's sudden overflow.

"Darwin, abstain." My voice reminded Darwin that he was a Ranger. And Rangers do not panic flail mindlessly in confined spaces. I heard something glass break in the back room. I fought the urge to chuckle. Turning around, I saw the entire Pokemart staff and the sparse early morning customers all frozen in place, staring at the biggest Goddamn Magikarp that they'd never dreamed of seeing.

"Forty pounds for here." I grunted for confirmation, ignoring the cameras that were being subconsciously raised to slack jawed faces.

…

Vauban made the most beguiling coos as she ate her hearty breakfast. It was a stark contrast to Cortez's efficient and speedy stripping of the Rattata carcass. I had been experimenting with different preparations of meat for Cortez, attempting to discern the pooch's favorite dish, but Cortez approached all food the same way. Like eating was just another task.

Feeding Darwin was almost as amusing as Vauban. Darwin likes to eat, and forty pounds of food disappears pretty quickly when you can swallow ten pounds at a time. Pokemarts probably don't see many Magikarps, especially not any Magikarps that can outweigh a Tauros, so Darwin drew a big crowd. Some people even dared to ask me if they could feed him.

So I bought another ten pounds of fish flakes just for a granny and her grandchildren.

The youngest of the three grandkids actually stuck her pudgy little hand into Darwin's mouth to feed him. Grandma got a little worried about that, but Darwin is well trained. Not to mention, Magikarps don't chew or even crush their food, they just swallow it.

The little girl squealed and giggled as the big fish's raspy mouth tickled her hand. That giggle got me smiling too. There's just something infectious about a toddler's laugh. It gets you deep down with a glowing feeling of fondness.

Once the kids were done feeding Darwin, they predictably moved on to the noisy Vauban. They were going to go pet the 'big-owange-puppy' but when Cortez turned to them, they saw his scar. That put the two older ones off. The toddler just gasped, and asked me if 'Quo-tez was hurt,' before running over to kiss 'da big ouchy boo-boo bewwer.'

I liked that kid. I liked that kid a lot.

Cortez was a little shocked at getting slobbered on by a cooing three-year old. He didn't really know how he should react, though I saw, with no small satisfaction I might add; how conflicted Cortez was from the unexpected affection.

That kid got right down to the deep in Cortez, and fast. You could see it in his eyes.

I think all of my mon were a little sad when the kids and granny left, but they soon got over it. Mostly because I ordered them to. We had a Gym battle to prepare for, and while the meal and company had lifted spirits, we needed to keep our minds focused. I recalled Darwin and left the Pokemart, intent on taking Vauban and Cortez for a walk.

To a place that I'd been meaning to go visit since Brenda died.

...

I was there for the burial ceremony. Echo's burial ceremony. I saw all of it from the confines of a wheelchair. I had a small medical staff at my shadow, keeping close tabs on my vitals. I'd refused my painkillers. I insisted on seeing them one last time through my single uncompromised eye.

It was closed casket. It generally was for Rangers, but this was especially called for regarding Echo. I didn't get a chance to meet anyone. No sooner had the final rites been spoken than I was hauled back to sickbay by my entourage of doctors and nurses. But I saw their families.

Pete was an only child, just like me. His father was single, ex-Military. And no uniform or honors were going to ease the pain of watching his only son buried.

Erin had both a mother and a father, and a little sister as well. His sister was so young, she thought that her older brother was just going to take a nap underground for a little while. She thought that she would get to see Erin again when he earned his next leave from the Rangers.

Carlos was the third oldest in a family of nine siblings. Both parents, three grandparents, a dozen uncles and aunts, all with half a hundred kids of their own. All of them lining up to cast a handful of soil and to say goodbye to Carlos.

Amber had a mother and two sisters, all of them as ugly and as nasty as she was. I found myself wondering if they were only in attendance to discover which one of them had been selected as Amber's beneficiary. Their tears were that fake.

And Brenda…

I never knew that she was an orphan. I didn't know that she lived a solitary life outside of the Rangers. Brenda's only social interactions pertained to her dedicated schooling, otherwise, she lived like a nun. Only one person was there to pour dirt over Brenda's grave. Only one person came to mourn for my sweet Bren.

Brenda's widow, Melissa.

I never learned how they met. I assumed it had something to do with schooling. I never got to speak with her. I didn't know if I want to. I was the Commanding Officer of Echo. I was sole the survivor. Did I even deserve to offer my condolences to Brenda's widow?

Later that week… I found myself thinking. If I had been buried with Echo…

Would my father have come to say goodbye?

Despite burying them three months ago, the grief is still very fresh. So is the guilt. I can't blame myself for what happened. I keep telling myself that. It was the fucking Snorlax, existing in a freaking part of the world that he wasn't supposed to be in.

It was a Goddamn mon that killed my Echo, not me.

But still… I could've done better. There must have been a way for me to save them. If I had just seen it then…

-I can't blame myself. But I can't stop blaming myself. I don't know how the Colonel does it. I can't even sleep without seeing them dying all over again…

-It's my fault. It's all my fault…

...And Melissa deserves to know…

…

I stood outside of their house. Brenda must have bought it with everything she made as a Ranger. It was small, but cozy. Just a simple little pink bungalow, with a colorful garden out front, and a white picket fence separating the lawn from the sidewalk. It looked like somebody's dream. I didn't know if Melissa would be home this early in the morning. I didn't know if she would recognise me. I didn't know if she would even open the door for a Ranger. I couldn't take that first step. I was afraid to. I couldn't cross the sidewalk into Brenda's personal piece of hearth. I dug into my inner breast pocket, and fished out my wallet.

Inside was something that I'd managed to convince Captain Lewis to steal for me. It was discolored. Crinkled. It still had blood stains on it. But the two veiled faces were still smiling. Still crying. It was still Brenda and Melissa on their wedding day.

It didn't give me strength. It only broke me.

"...I'm sorry, Bren… I can't do it…"

The photo disappeared in a snap of my wallet. Tears were running down my face. Vauban was looking up at me, trying to figure out some way of comforting me, while Cortez stayed a respectable distance back, letting me have this moment to mourn.

I hightailed it away from Melissa's house, my limp showing in my haste. I didn't care. I couldn't do it. I couldn't say that I was sorry. I was a coward, and there was nothing worth hiding.

It was awhile before I shook myself out of it. I didn't know where my desperate retreat had exactly taken me to. I was close to the stonewalls of Pewter, in a less popular part of town. I leaned up against that ancient wall for support while I finished piecing the shattered Ranger back into a whole. Then shitty timing caught up to me.

My Tact. Pad was buzzing an alert over my left breast. I dug it out, and spat in disgust when I saw the incoming call's number.

Christopher M. Lebreau. Spokesperson for the Pokemon Fanclub. Private sector political correspondent for the Ranger Corps.

And my personalized PR agent.

I didn't want to answer, but I had to. Chris had been appointed to me by High Command, and his word was backed by theirs. So technically…

Chris is something of my handler.

"Chris." I answered the call, putting it on audio only.

"Yell-ho? Hey, Zane! You in Pewter yet, my aspiring Blackhat superstar?" Chris's default voice was over enthusiastic and patronizing as fuck. I couldn't stand him.

"Yeah, I'm in Pewter." I answered, keeping communication limited to the barest information exchange as was possible.

"Swell deal, kid! Swell deal. Alright, listen up champ in the making-"

Oh, here we go…

"Brock uses Rock-Types-"

Go fuck yourself, Captain obvious.

"So Cortez's flames aren't going to do much against him. And don't even think about using Darwin in the match. You'll just make a laughing stock out of yourself."

No shit, Sherlock.

"Now have you caught any other mon, besides Vauban? If you got your Ranger hands on a Nidoking or Nidoqueen-"

"No, I only have my G.I. mon. And there is no point to me diving into the Frontier in search of the big Nido. The mating season is over and they've made themselves scarce." I cut him off before my eye roll hurt my face. Pokemon Fanclub or not, this guy didn't know shit about the laws of nature.

"Shit, Zane… Goddamnit, kid! I told you to get more firepower before challenging Brock! How the hell is one lonely Bulbasaur going to wreck his novice team? There's a fucking Onix on his novice crew! What is a fucking Bulbasaur going to do against that?! Throw peanuts at it?!" Chris was screaming at me, and I couldn't have cared less. Whenever Chris started freaking out, I just turned up the music in my head. I'd wait for him to lose his temper before blowing him off again.

"Of all the arrogant sons of bitches out there, you Zane-"

"-I can't believe that you didn't listen to me! You stupid motherfucking-"

"-High Command said that you were good, but all I'm seeing is a shitty excuse for a-"

"-So what the fuck are we going to do now?!"

"...Are you EVEN LISTENING TO ME?!"

"Yep." I answered, completely nonchalant, after a measured pause.

"Oh my God, Zane… Do you even want that Black Beret?"

I yawned loudly enough for the receiver to pick up.

"You cocky little shit! You don't get it! I pulled all of the strings I could! I got your match scheduled in between two minor League Premierships! Two different Camera crews are showing up to record and broadcast the big fights! We could've snuck your fight into their programs! I just needed you to make it FLASHY! SOMETHING WORTH FILMING!" Chris was losing it all over again. I stooped down to rub Vauban's head.

"What have you got there, Vauban? Is that a stick of gum?" I used the kiddy-talk on Vauban, receiver still well within the proximity of my voice. Vauban got all excited and gurgled, expecting a thorough case of rough love to be incoming.

And I was happy to oblige her.

"I'm sorry, Chris. Could you repeat that last bit for me? Vauban was playing with some street trash. These little Bulbasaurs are just so curious." I gave Chris a taste of my patronizing voice.

It sounded even more cynical than his.

"I can't believe you, Zane…" Chris's breath was shuddering against his end.

"Who's a good little girl? Who's a tubby little shit? My Vauban, that's who!" I finished ruffling Vauban's bulb, and turned my ruffling attentions onto Chris's feathers.

"You're going to lose, Zane. Even a Novice ranked Gym battle requires a lot of effort. With your credentials in the Ranger Corps, you could have snuck in a powerhouse like a Nidoking! Brock's Onix would have had its hands full trying to put down a Ranger trained Nidoking!"

"Onixia don't have hands, Chris. And I don't like having rapists on my team. So fuck the Nidoking. I might have swung for a Nidoqueen, but the Corps mopped up the vast majority of them this season. It's gonna be at least another three years before the Nidoqueen numbers make a resurgence. Hopefully." I shot his tirade down. I didn't want a Nidoking, and even if I caught a feral, there was no way that I'd have that thing obeying me in week's time. A Nidoking would still be crippled after what I'd put it through in my training regimen.

"...Great. So no flash, and no chance. You already gone and fucked it all up, Zane. Your stupid Bulbasaur is going to get torn to pieces. I hope that you haven't bought into that whole Trading Card Game's Type Effectiveness bullshit, because in the real world, a Flower-Toad doesn't have a chance against an eighteen tonne Onix." Chris was actually growling at me about reality.

Fucking hypocrite.

"I'm not you, Chris. I don't waste my time playing some stupid kid's card game. I am well aware of what does and doesn't work on a bleeding Onix. And you know what? A Nidoking's horn may be able to cleave stone, but their bodies don't take too well to having eighteen tonnes of fucking Rock-Snake falling down ontop of them. An Onix is ranked Delta-Four. A Nidoking is ranked Delta-Three. Brock has the power advantage. Size and strength will not win me the match." I growled back.

"Okay… So what are going to do, then? Watch your Bulbasaur eat shit in the Gym ring?" Chris asked sarcastically.

"You forget that Vauban was born to be a Saboteur Class. Or more likely, you don't know what that is. I just need the Onix to open his mouth roughly four meters away from Vauban, and I've already won." I answered. That got Chris to pause.

"Status?"

"Maybe…" My smirk was audible.

"What kind?" Chris asked me with cold suspicion.

"The Military kind."

"Umm… Zane? They don't allow that in restricted format… You aren't doing what I think you're doing, are you?"

"Requesting unrestricted? The hell I am." I answered.

"Zane, even if you poison that Onix, it will still kill Vauban before septic shock sets in! Even the Military's best nerve agents take a lot of time to work! Time enough for that Onix to squish your toad!"

"You obviously don't know what a Saboteur Class can do, do you Chris? That Onix will never touch Vauban. I just have to make sure that Cortez takes down the Roggenrola and the Geodude before I put my fresh little girl in the spotlight."

"Now you just sound fucking nuts. What the hell can a Growlithe do against a Roggenrola and a Geodude? You can't bite them, or burn them. You're going to get your team killed, Zane." Chris made his dire prediction.

"Unrestricted format, remember? It mean's that Cortez can play dirty." I was smiling like a soulless beast.

"So what does that mean?" Chris asked.

"You'll see the flash. One of the nice things about G.I. mon? They know things that they shouldn't."

Oh yeah, listen to my gurn.

"Do you have a backup plan, just in case?" Chris asked.

"Vauban is my backup plan. Hopefully I won't have to use it."

"You might have to, Zane. Even if Cortez knows some higher leveled fire techniques, I doubt that a Growlithe has the power required to pull them off effectively against a Rock-Type."

"Strategy, Chris. Strategy. That is what's going to win me the match." I replied, cocky as ever.

"Okay, but it's all on you when it goes foul. Remember, Brock is a League Duo-Flame. He's seen it all, and his Championship team could put him on the Elite Four by the end of this season. So be ready to fail, and get your mon killed." Chris predicted my with loss dire certainty. I was really hoping that he was betting money on Brock's victory.

I wanted Chris to take it in the financial teeth.

"Right, well you're on tomorrow evening at two-thirty. Do not be late. If you can actually topple an Onix with a Bulbasaur… That will qualify as flash. See-ya then, kid." Chris resumed using his patronizing voice for the goodbye. I hung up without offering him any of my own well wishes.

Chris didn't like being told to fuck off anyways.

"Well…" I looked down at my happy Vauban.

"Now that Chris has been dealt with, I suppose that I should get myself some breakfast…" I muttered. Vauban belched below me.

"You sick little bitch." I laughed as my foot tumbled Vauban over. She rolled back onto her feet, and playfully tackled my leg.

"Vauban…" My stern voice reminded Vauban of her place. Vauban immediately cut the antics, and shuffled a respectable distance away.

Vauban knew that we couldn't play. But it seemed to be an irrepressible behavior of her's.

"Keep a lid on it, Vauban. I know things have changed, but we are still Rangers. And we will be _judged_ as Rangers are judged." Vauban tensed up, and struggled to maintain a dignified composure. But her watery eyes hinted at just how wounded that warning had left her feeling.

…

Did you really think that I'd torture my Vauban for some sadistic pleasure? Did you perhaps, establish a shallow motive for my continued violence against the sweetest little thing in my life?

I'm only so damn harsh to Vauban because I needed to be.

I need to protect her.

Vauban is a service mon. There are certain expectations of a service mon. Combat, situational, cooperative, compliance, mental, duress, and so many other expectations. Vauban could meet every one of those bars. Every single one except…

Emotional.

I'm as much to blame for it as she is. Rangers do not get emotionally attached to their Pokemon. It isn't just down to bigotry. Emotional bonds prevent Rangers from performing their duties with the utmost efficiency. If we are unwilling to make a call, if we are unable to make a sacrifice…

Then a battle can cost more than just a single mon's life.

A Ranger who gets emotionally attached to their Pokemon is a liability. The way Command deals with such liabilities is as rudimentary as martial corrections can get.

They kill the mon in question, and permanently sever the bond.

I'd kept my bond with Vauban under the radar for as long as I could. All by beating her senseless whenever she slipped. And Vauban slipped on a daily basis. She should have known better. She did know better.

But she couldn't hide it as well as I could. For my first year out of the Academy, Vauban had been on the Proctor's list of compromised mon. I had to beat Vauban within an inch of her life to get her off of it. One psyche examination on either of us would have been all it took to betray just how much Vauban means to me, or me to her. If that ever happens, the Rangers will kill Vauban and make me watch.

Or worse, they'd make me pull the trigger myself.

She is my greatest shame, and my dearest friend. She is the one unconditionally loving thing I have found since losing my family. The one comforting constant that I've held onto throughout every other terrible loss in my career. She isn't a service mon to me.

Vauban is my family.

I can't lose Vauban. I have to protect her. Vauban needs to learn. Vauban needs to adapt.

I need her to get mean.

...I need her to hate me.

…

I ordered fried takeout from a street vendor. The shit was poisonously salty, but a damn sight healthier than the MREs in my pack at the hotel. I stuffed my face full of tempura coated fish, dipped in a sweet and smoky spicy sauce. Compared to MREs, this was five-star dining.

I just barely finished my meal when a familiar voice called out to me.

"Hey Ranger!"

Oh, you gotta be kidding me…

"How did the date go?" The black-eyed kid from yesterday came running down the street. Pewter is a pretty small city.

I knew that he liked me.

"As well as I said it would." I grunted. The kid was panting when he stopped running. He looked up at my severe face with a big ol' grin.

"That was all of fifty meters. Are you that out of shape?" I grumbled. The kid just laughed.

"Well, I'm no Ranger… So yeah… I'm pretty winded."

Kids. Need I say more?

"So did you take on Brock yet?" The kid knew more about my plans than Tammy did.

Probably because I was shit-talking him yesterday, before I damn near eviscerated his Rattata.

"That's tomorrow, now keep your mouth shut on that." I advised the kid with a warning tone. His smile only grew.

"Ranger's Oath!" The kid raised a sloppy salute.

He was trying to brownnose me, and he was going about it the _wrong_ fucking way.

"Don't do that. You'll hurt yourself." I grumbled. The kid's smile faded.

"Sorry… I just thought…"

"Would you stop snivelling? What the fuck are you doing running down the city streets anyways? Don't you have somewhere to be?" I was in full-on bully mode. I just wanted my space. Couldn't the kid give me that much?

"No… I was just looking for you…" The kid fell back.

Okay. That shut me up.

"And why were you looking for a Ranger?" I asked, my tone becoming dire. The kid swallowed.

"I… Wanted to ask you for some pointers…" The kid was properly nervous now.

So was I.

"...What kind of pointers?" I asked, my voice solemn.

"I just… wanted to know what the best plan of action would be… before I went into the recruiter's office."

That made my entire body go cold.

"...You want to be a Ranger?" I asked, slowly. The kid swallowed and nodded.

I just stared at him in disbelief. This was my worst nightmare. Something I'd been dreading since accepting my role in High Command's political agenda.

Why?

Why do kids always try to kill themselves?

"...You're not cut out for being a Ranger." My voice was low. Dangerously so. The kid puffed himself up, as if I'd just proposed a challenge, not stated honest fact.

"I'll bet that you're wrong." He even sounded cocky when he said it.

"No. I'm not. And you are not reporting to any recruiter's office. I will break your fucking legs if I have to stop you." My voice removed any sense of uncertainty. It was deliberately cold, decisive.

I was not being the shitty example that sent this kid into an early grave.

The kid backed up. There was fear in those eyes. Fear, and confusion.

"Why can't I be a Ranger?" The kid asked, voice all soft.

"Because you would die. And I don't want that on my conscious." Truth is ever the harsh bitch, but it was the only bitch I ever loved.

"What if I don't die?" The kid found some pre-pubescent balls, and challenged my assertion with them.

I don't care how stupid your balls are, I will crush them.

"You will. And I've already filled enough graves by being an example. Don't dig me another one." I replied, voice shaking in rage. The kid looked as if he were about to cry. Cortez drew closer, and a look in his eye reminded me.

It was all about the approach.

"Come on, follow me." I growled, turning on a heel and stalking off towards Pewter's south gate, with Vauban close in my shadow. The kid hesitated to follow me, but Cortez damn near took a chunk out of his ass for it. After that, the kid wisened up fast.

When I give an order, you follow it.

I dragged the kid out of the city walls. Just for him to leave Pewter City, he needed a Trainer's License and a mon, or a legal guardian with such.

I had suspended his license and impounded his mon yesterday. I wasn't a legal guardian.

I was a Ranger.

That kid was more safe with me than he would have been with his entire family armed to the teeth behind him, and the city guard knew it.

We headed out on the auspicious Viridian Road. Follow it down far enough, and you would find the Viridian Forest. Further beyond that, the wealthy city of Viridian itself. But we weren't headed that far. I just wanted to talk to this kid in a place that he would feel exposed in.

…

The Established Routes are one of mankind's greatest achievements in the Post-Brink era. Through hundreds and hundreds of years spent toiling in the Frontier, we have carved safe roads from one city to another, all fortified with massive walls and exterior deterrents. The Rangers were key elements in the placement and construction of the Routes, and to this day, the Ranger's Hades Division maintains every stretch of safe commute throughout all of the regions.

The walls themselves are rarely pretty to look at. They're generally nothing more than massive piles of craggy rocks thrown haphazardly together into a winding unbroken mound. The walls themselves don't stop feral mon from trespassing into the Routes, but it does slow them down a whole hell of a lot. The walls are ugly and primitive for a reason. If the wall is breached, by say a Steelix, then the wall's patch-up requires nothing more than the breach being filled with more rocks. No wall humanity can make will ever stop the Delta-Fives and some of the Delta-Fours from breaking into man's domain, so quick and easy repairs have the advantage over the more expensive, more complex, and more robust walls.

Beyond the walls is the Hades's Swath. Five-hundred meters of burned and salted earth, carved with deep trenches dug in multiple rows, all filled with sharp and pointy toys. The Hades Division mops the exterior of the Routes up on a monthly rotation. Their crews are constantly moving around the Region, all in order to keep the Routes' defenses maintained. The Hades Division got their name for some of the methods they used to clear the earth. Burning vegetation down does a good job of keeping herbivore mon out, which in turn keeps the predator mon out, but the Hades Division actually goes a step further by tilling the soil with Magcargos and Muks.

So that shit doesn't ever want to touch that sterile and dead land again.

You can smell the crews coming from klicks away, and though 'civilized' people will bitch and moan unending about the odor of Muk and burning vegetation…

You won't see 'civilized' people dying five-hundred meters beyond the city walls, all thanks to the Ranger's Hades Division.

I've seen the Hades Division at work, and let me tell you, those guys have shitty jobs. Between the Environmental Suits and Pyroclast Rigs that they have to constantly wear, those poor bastards are never comfortable. And they're always exposed to a Muk's Pollutants, which effectively cuts their life expectancy in half.

Excadrills and Sandslashes rend the land and clean up the trenches, while the Muk drag their nasty selves across the earthen wound. Then the Magcargoes chase them all down, cauterizing the toxic gash with their intense body heat. And the Rangers moderate all of it, keeping it all in an orderly and efficient process.

Sounds like fun? I didn't think so.

You have to be plum-fucking nuts to join the Hades Division, but it is a necessary evil if humanity is to maintain what few holds mankind has left.

Other than the Hades Division, you also have the Ranger's Firewatch crews patrolling the Routes, advising travellers as to any dangers currently besieging the road ahead. Firewatch also engages and kills off any feral mon, considered too dangerous for human contact, living within the confines of the walls. Sometimes the Vets have to come out and deal with the specialty cases; such as a Nidoking scaling the walls in search of new territory, or the Beedrill setting up their hives on the Routes, despite the very few pollinating forms of vegetation growing within the Hades's Swath.

That said, Flying-Types, most notably the Fearow; aren't exactly put off by any of the defenses. Which is why Firewatch is specifically trained for dealing with the most dangerous of the Routes' common nuisances. To top it off, the Rangers actually provide habitats within the walls specifically for certain species of mon. Just to provide an incentive for the inexhaustible Rattatas and Pidgeys to stay off of the main road. Ever been warned about the dangers lurking within the tall grass? There is a reason for why that tall grass is around, just as there is a reason for why that warning exists.

If you like danger, then walk in the tall grass. If you like safety, then walk on the Goddamn road.

Unbelievably, Trainers actually assist in the defenses. Their competitive calling actually removes common threats from the equation. Trainers capture or wound so many feral mon that it becomes almost impossible for any Pokemon species to gain a foothold in the Routes, making the roads even more safe for travel.

I would almost respect the Trainer community for their unintentional assistance towards humanity's continued safety, except Trainers keep getting cocky and decide to scale the walls for themselves, before crossing the Hades's Swath in search of the big game prizes still thriving out in the Frontier.

The stupid fucking idiots get themselves killed nine times out of ten whenever they cross into the Frontier.

You need to be either a Veteran Ranger, or a Championship Trainer in order to survive out there.

But kids seem to think that they're ten-meters tall and inedible, and they're the dumb fucks that jump the walls most often.

…

"Look around, kid." I finally spoke after the first klick had been put between us and Pewter's historical walls. The kid took a gander, but he didn't know what he was looking for.

But he saw exactly what I wanted him to.

"This is a Route. A sanctuary of sorts. You're not exactly safe here, but you aren't guaranteed to end up murdered." I headed over towards the Route wall, and began to climb the primitive foundations.

"Come on, higher up. Let's go." I ordered the nervous kid. He looked one way, and then another. As if he didn't want anyone to know about what we were doing.

My hopes that this behavior meant the kid had finally found a sense of caution were dashed a moment later, when the eager youth practically ran up the crags to catch up with me.

It took us all of a minute to climb to the top of the wall. Vauban and Cortez kept up with us, both mon displaying their impressive acrobatic skills, despite their small statures.

"Look over there. See that treeline?" I asked pointing across the Hades's Swath. The kid was grinning.

Not good.

"Yeah! That's the Frontier, isn't it?"

"Yep. That's the Frontier. The backyard of the Rangers." I sighed. The kid was bouncing on his feet. He was obviously curious as to where I was going with this.

I was going directly with it.

"Come on, that's our next stop." I said as I threw my fucked up legs over the summit, and began my descent down. Vauban and Cortez followed me.

The kid didn't.

Very good.

"What's the matter, Cadet? Afraid of heights?" I mocked him from below. The kid looked properly scared now.

Finally. But I am not done learning you yet.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" The kid asked, worried.

"Of course it's not a good idea. But we're gonna do it anyway." I chuckled as I continued down.

"But why? Isn't that dangerous?" The kid looked at me for some kind of reassurance.

But the truth is rarely a reassurance.

"Because Rangers don't always act on safe ideas. Actually… We never do. Now get your chicken-shit ass down here, Cadet." I ordered. Cortez growled at my side.

It wasn't often that Cortez growled. Growlithes are notorious for making a constant racket. It was one of the reasons for why Cortez was so unusual. Part of Cortez's bearing was his silence.

And when Cortez revoked his silence, it meant something.

Something deep.

The kid scrambled down after us. I don't know how much of it was my belittling or Cortez's warning, but that kid moved his ass to get down to ground floor.

"We're gonna cross the trenches. Walk with me further down. When you see a flag, call out. There should be a run of track buried around those flags that we can use to cross the spikes." The kid glanced into the trenches, and fell back instantly. They were a lot deeper looking down here than they seemed up on the wall. And those spikes would give you tetanus just for looking at them.

"Cortez, stay on alert just in case. Vauban be ready for a scrap if big brother Cortez picks something up." I reminded my mon of our location. They didn't really need it, but it was a CO's duty to ensure a certain level of awareness among his Squad.

"I see a flag! Yellow, right?" The kid asked, pointing further south. I squinted my one good eye and nodded.

"That is what we are looking for. Passage across Hades's Swath."

When we reached the yellow flag, the two of us dug the rickety track out of the dirt, and propped it up on a reinforced section of the trench.

"Now keep your feet dead center on the platform. Otherwise the track wobbles, and you may fall right into the trench." I explained the safety rules regarding passage across Hades's Swath with an unconcerned voice, then I walked my gimpy ass across that track at mach two without even shaking it.

"Come on. Now it's your turn, Cadet. Don't keep me waiting."

The kid crossed the track on his hands and knees.

Good. Be afraid.

"Alright. Only another four trenches to go." I was completely at ease, and the kid was already getting the shifty eyes, desperately seeking some escape.

Once we made it across the final trench, I paused for a moment before the frontline of the Frontier.

"Cortez, find me a solo Beedrill. Vauban, prep for an ambush dismantle. Cortez will lead us there stealthily, you will disarm the Beedrill quietly. Kid-"

"-My name… My name is Tony." He was shaking like a leaf. I smiled warmly at him, and patted Tony on the shoulder.

"Okay, Tony. Hold my knife for me." I unsheathed my BAMF, and the kid's eyes grew massive when he beheld the size of my ugly fucking knife.

"Hold it with both hands if it strains your wrist to hold it with just one. And don't you dare drop it." My friendly demeanor disappeared in the blink of an eye when I warned Tony against dropping my weapon. The kid held my BAMF in both hands like an unbalanced club, and I quickly adjusted his form and grip into a more appropriate combat stance.

"Okay, just hold onto the knife nice and tight like. Cortez?"

Cortez was still sniffing. He was doing his usual thorough job.

"I want a scout. Find me one far away from the hive." I specified a target for Cortez. Both the kid and I followed the hound for another southerly klick down the Hades's Swath, before Cortez gave me the signal.

"Alright, Tony. This is how it is going to play out. Once we cross the treeline, you are going to be more silent than you have ever been in your entire life. You will follow my footprints, step by step. Or we will die. Okay?"I was back to being Zane, the friendly smiling Ranger.

The kid turned white.

Excellant.

"Alright Cortez. Ten meters ahead on Poll. Vauban, you're on rear guard. Kid, you are glued to my ass like a dried turd. Unit, advance now."

My order was followed flawlessly. The kid was so scared out of his mind that he had turned over control to me.

Good for him. He might live through this.

I followed Cortez's careful route into the Frontier. I already knew that my Hunter-Killer was proficient tracker, but Cortez found us a mark even faster than I anticipated. Cortez located a lone Beedrill half a klick deep into the Frontier, without incurring any incident on the way, and without alerting the buzzing drone.

That is one hell of a dog, let me tell you.

I signaled to Vauban as soon as the Beedrill came into sight. She moved up from rear guard, her vines already extending. I gave Cortez the the guard signal, and then indicated the kid, who was looking mighty sick on sight of that giant fugly insect and its lethal hardware.

Cortez hunkered down in front of the kid, effectively keeping him in location. Then Vauban and I advanced.

I was unarmed, but completely unconcerned. Even if Vauban only plucked one stinger with the first strike, I could handle anything that the Beedrill could throw at me with my bare hands alone.

I didn't have anything to worry about. I gave Vauban the attack order, and two seconds later, the Beedrill was relieved of his wings. Both me and Vauban followed up together, Vauban's vines tearing off one of the twin needles, and me breaking off the other.

I kicked the crippled insect over and quickly fell back. Just as if it were programmed to do so, the Beedrill lunged at me with its abdominal stinger. I had predicted this, and we were ready for it. I was the bait. And Vauban was the snare. My little girl took the last lethal weapon that the Beedrill had.

The Beedrill was still very much alive, and feeling far more pissed off than in pain. I grabbed the ugly son of a bitch by his neck and lifted him off of the ground.

"Hey Tony?" I called out, ignoring the oozing appendages jabbing at me like they still had their stings.

The kid was frozen up. He was seconds away from puking. I smiled all friendly like as I got closer to him.

"Catch." I put both hands on the Beedrill and flung its ass right at Tony. The kid defrosted a second too late. The projectile mon hit Tony with enough force to knock both him and the Beedrill over.

Tony was screaming his ass off as the Beedrill got its mandibles full of his hair, yet for some reason, Tony had forgotten all about the knife in his hands. The kid just pushed at the aggravated Beedrill and squirmed beneath it, all while the Beedrill stabbed at Tony with his disarmed limbs. I walked over all calm and collected, and pulled the Beedrill off of Tony.

The kid just about ran, but Cortez got a mouthful of his shorts, and dragged Tony to the forest floor; while I flung the Beedrill over into the dirt.

"Remember my knife?" I asked when the kid rolled over and gaped up at me from the ground.

"Use it." I tossed my head over towards the flailing Beedrill. Vauban was harassing him in her own adorable way. My sweet little girl was literally poking the Beedrill with a stick.

Now that is a game that even Rangers will permit to be played.

The kid got to his feet. He eyed the ugly Beedrill on the ground, and then the knife miraculously still in his hands. His eyes shot back to the Beedrill. Then jolted back to the knife.

Beedrill.

-Knife.

Beedrill…

-Knife.

Beedrill?

-Knife?

I could see Tony's frazzled brain working it out with every twitchy glance.

"Come on now. Kill the ugly fucker." I smiled all nice and perty like, as if I'd just suggested that Tony should cut up a cake. Tony retched.

'-I… -I… -I…" Tony couldn't even move his mouth properly.

The kid was completely traumatized.

Mission accomplished.

"Well, okay then. I'll do it." Still smiling, I turned back to the mutilated Beedrill.

And then I proceeded to disembowel that piece of shit mon with my bare hands, making as graphic a display as was possible using every piece of the Beedrill's remaining anatomy.

I was brutal, needlessly so. Even the Vets would have thought that there was something wrong with the Fucking Bastard, had they witnessed me killing that Beedrill as viscerally as I did.

But that was the point. This kid was getting to see the worst of both man and mon in one day.

Tony would never again think about joining the Rangers after that.

I guarantee it.

…

It was mid afternoon by the time we got back to Pewter City. Vauban and Cortez were both resting in their Pokeballs, both had been dismissed shortly after our return to the safety of the Route walls. It was just me and Tony now. One staggering pale kid, eyes still wide and lips tightly pursed. One whistling Ranger, covered head to foot in Beedrill parts. The gate guard gave us one hell of a peculiar look as we strode casually past him, back into Pewter City. I waited until we hit the downtown section before I asked Tony my new favorite question.

"So what did you learn today?" I stopped whistling just to grin at the kid. Tony hesitated for a second. He struggled against the shock for a little bit. I was perfectly content with giving him the necessary time to respond. At long last, Tony opened his mouth to reply...

-And finally blew the grits that he'd been holding in ever since we left the Frontier.

"A valuable fucking lesson." I chuckled. The poor kid lifted his head from the pool of sick, eyes wild and animated by panic. I put a finger on his forehead, and pressed him back into a straight posture.

"...You aren't a Ranger, Tony. Now go find out who you really are." I spoke softly to the kid. He could only nod numbly in response. Then Tony ran away as far and as fast as he could. Fleeing from the psychotic Ranger and his twisted reality.

Despite my satisfaction at that retreat, I did feel a twinge guilty when I realized that Tony no longer liked me.

I headed back to Tammy's after that. I made sure to strip off my gut encrusted uniform before stepping into Tammy's abode, just so that I didn't track any entrails into a civilized home.

Tammy was already back, and as scandalized as all fuck when I walked in wearing only my socks, tank top, and boxers.

"What the hell have you been up too?! Were you stripping for-?"

Just look at my laundry.

"Oh..." Tammy put a hand over her mouth. I just smirked.

"Don't worry, baby. This Ranger is housebroken." I grinned at the cute Officer, still in her uniform.

"Is that… Beedrill?" Tammy asked, looking slightly concerned about one of the larger yellow-and-black striped chunks still twitching on my uniform's shoulder.

"Just another day in the Rangers for Zane Bastard." I chuckled. Tammy swallowed.

"Thank God that it's just a Beedrill… I was worried that it have been a Venomoth-" Tammy began.

"-Say what? Why would it be a Venomoth?" I asked sternly. We still had another month to go before the Venomoth season started in Viridian. Tammy looked at me hesitantly.

"Didn't you hear? Two Rangers were killed this morning by a swarm of Venomoth."

That was all I needed to hear.

I was back in my uniform in the blink of an eye. Tammy just stood there and watched as I suited back up.

"Why the hell didn't my radio go off?" I spat, booking it towards the front door. Forget Pewter City. Forget Brock. Forget the League. Fuck Chris.

The Venomoths had come early to spawn, and two of my fellow Rangers were already dead.

"You're not heading back to Viridian Prime Outpost, are you Zane?" Tammy asked, her voice worried. My hand paused on the doorknob.

"That is exactly where I am going." My voice was a low growl. Tammy shuddered.

"Zane… Please be careful…" Tammy was tearing up. I worked my mouth. I didn't know that Tammy was that attached to me.

"I'll do my best, Tammy, but I hear the call coming in loud and clear. And no Ranger waits for thunder to herald the rain." I stormed out of Tammy's home, and hoofed it for my hotel to reclaim my G.I. pack. After that detail was addressed, my ass passed under Pewter's City gate for the third time today, on my second exit, heading south. Heading towards the sound of the call.

Once more, I was running back into the Brink.

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 **ACE (AGENCY of CORE EXECUTIVES):** Originally the Kanto Region's Secret Service, ACE has expanded into foreign shores to investigate and ensure Kanto's continued national security. Question have been raised as to whether or not ACE still serves the interests of Kanto in both the domestic and abroad sectors, or if ACE has evolved into a shadow nation possessing its own political agenda, free of the Kantonese Provincial Government's authority.

 **Trainer's Eyes:** An electronically automated communications feature of the Pokedex. Always active and impossible to turn off. Trainer's Eyes alerts Pokedex wielding Trainers of other approaching competitive Pokedex equipped Trainers. Used primarily for battling, though hidden software runs behind the scenes to calculate all manner of competitive statistics relating to the Trainer community. The Trainer's Eyes effective radius is equivalent to roughly three-hundred meters.

 **Trainer's Account:** Effectively a share of the League's market stocks, except that the share doesn't belong to the Trainer who purchased it. Used to maintain, moderate, and guarantee the stakes claimed and lost in official Pokemon Battles.

 **Pokemart:** Business that markets all manner of Pokemon fitness accessories, services, and food. Generally regarded as a hotspot for mon-humpers, Pokemarts are often avoided by the hardcore competitive Trainer population.

 **Trainer's Mart:** A generalized retail establishment that deals in Pokeballs, Pokemon Medicines, Survival Gear, Travel Foods, and even Pokemon themselves. Often patronized by the hardcore competitive Trainers, Trainer's Marts also purvey Training secrets at a discount. Because of the wealth of supplies and knowledge offered, Trainer's Marts are generally the first stop for the competitive Trainer when entering a new district.


	5. Chapter IV: Hazardous Living Conditions

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 **The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero**

 _Written by,_

 **Vile M.F. Slanders**

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" _ **...The Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare…"**_ _-Geneva Protocol; enacted Pre-Brink June 17th, 1925. Disavowed Post-Brink; December 22nd, 12._

 **-v-**

 **Chapter IV: Hazardous Living Conditions**

Venomoth.

One of the few non-Pollutant Poison-Types that still maintain a seat on the F5 species list. The F5 list. Anything on the F5 list is designated a danger to all of humanity, as well as being considered an environmental hazard.

F5. Originally a classification system designed by Trainers to identify five species-Types of mon that require extra-specialized preparation or methods to train.

'5' is for the original list's species count. 'F' is for 'Forbidden.'

Or 'F' is for Freaky, Fucked-up, Fucking-nasty, Fuck-life, For-idiots, etcetera, etcetera.

The first Type mentioned on the original F5 list is Psychic. For good reason.

Psychic-Types can cook your brain. But not just in a lethal way, oh no. Trainers who use Psychic-Types run the risk of being controlled by their own mon. A Trainer controlled by a mon can do untold amounts of damage to their surroundings. Generally the more skilled and better equipped the mon-controlled Trainer is, the higher amount of casualties claimed. The Provincial Governments consider the risk of Telepathic control so dangerous that Trainers who use Psychic-Type mon are required to apply for a specialized League certification and attend mandated bi-monthly MRI sessions.

I've heard of some pretty outrageous claims pertaining to Psychic-Type mon. There is a popular myth that flies around regarding Alakazams and their incomparable brainpower.

Rangers use Seeker Class Alakazams in the field, and to our surprise; the Veterans have discovered that the Alakazams are seemingly unable to utilize their massively acclaimed IQs to master something as simple as knot tying.

A Quantum Computer for a brain my ass. Alakazams are stupid shits that just wield an insane amount of Psychokinetic potential. They do not possess the greatest aptitude for Hypnotic-Dictation. Alakazams are nasty in a fight, but far from the most notorious species of the mind-fucking Psychics.

The Psychic-Types that you want to be leary of are the Hypnos and Drowzees.

Those things will screw you up but good.

Hypnos. Holy shit. These freaks have a reputation for hypnotizing their victims into doing some pretty fucked up stuff.

Have you ever seen a Trainer eat their own feet raw? No, I haven't either, but I've seen the medical records pertaining to the event in question, as well as the mon execution report following it.

A fucking Hypno scrambled that Trainer's brain, which resulted in a human being cannibalizing their own body. Regardless of whether it was the Hypno itself that mentally suggested autosarcophagy, or if it was just the incurable insanity brought about by having your brain violated by a mon, neither cause really matters.

The reason it happened was because a Goddamn Hypno started fucking around with a human head. And humans do not react favorably when their brains are picked apart.

And don't even get me started on the Drowzees.

The Vermillion Rangers have a policy for Trainers who take the eastern Route through the Prague towards the coast.

The policy?

Do not sleep in the Prague.

Ever.

If you do decide to pitch camp in the Prague, just to catch a little shut eye…

-Do not scream when you wake up from the single most terrifying nightmare that you will never remember.

Because if you do scream, then the Drowzee standing over you that just _ate your fucking dream_ is guaranteed to bludgeon your ass to death with its chunky fists.

Better to just hold in that scream, pray that the odds favor your survival…

-And then live the rest of your miserable life terminally depressed because that Drowzee destroyed something in your head that allowed you to experience joy.

Most Drowzee dream-eating survivors commit suicide within the first month. So if you ever find yourself in the Prague, where Drowzees are most common, do not sleep.

It is considered unhealthy.

Number two on the original F5 list was the Dark-Types. Which is the primary reason for why the original list was scrapped in the first place. Dark-Types were originally included by Trainers because of the superstitions they inspired. Not because they actually wrecked more shit than any other Type of mon. That said, some species of Dark-Types _deserve_ to be on the F5 list. Zoroarks, Tyranitars, and Hydreigons _especially._

Most Dark-Types are innately nervous. They're generally black in coloration, they possess some rather peculiar behaviors, and they're the only living organisms on the planet that can traverse the Distortion without being adversely affected.

We don't know exactly what the Distortion is, or its connection to the Brink, but it showed up around the same time that the Brink Collapsed.

The only thing that we have confirmed about the Distortion, is that the Distortion is the closest thing to a literal Hell that humanity has ever come across.

Humans have gone into the Distortion. Some have even gone into the Distortion intentionally. Very few return. Those that do…

...Well, they're not the same people that they were before going into the Distortion.

A shared feature among all Distortion Pilgrims is insanity. Sometimes the mental imbalance manifests itself as mania. It's usually displayed as dementia. Generally, there will be symptoms hinting at a little bit of both.

 _In extremes._

The Ranger academy shows all Cadets video recordings of what happens to a human being after they cross into the Distortion and return. Just so that the Cadets know why they don't want to go into the Distortion. The footage my class saw was taken from a series of padded observation cells, so we all had a pretty good idea as to what was going to happen to the Pilgrims detained in the pillow-rooms.

That doesn't mean that we were ready for it.

All of the Pilgrims screamed endlessly about the 'Darkness,' moaned 'Something is coming' ad nauseam, and then started worshipping piles of their own excrement, before tearing their eyes out and offering them to something called-

'Giratina.'

Whatever a 'Giratina' is, I don't want to know. Something from the Distortion, I imagine, but that's all the pondering I will devote to discerning the nature of 'Giratina.' Mostly because those looneys who came out of the Distortion…

-Well, they didn't exactly stop the offerings to Giratina with just their shredded eyes.

And I had to watch that video all the way to the gruesome end in the academy. I'm going no further with the details.

Dark-Types are usually pretty skittish. They don't like being seen, and looking one in the eyes generally causes a panic reaction from the mon in question. They are extremely distrustful of every other thing on the planet, but normally no more dangerous than the equivalent Normal-Type mon.

Dark-Types earned themselves a sinister reputation on account of their edgy behaviors and physical appearances, as well their unexplainable disappearances, followed by their erratic reappearances.

They became known as the Interlopers. Nobody really liked the sneaky Dark-Types or their mysterious ways, and it started all manner of superstitions and taboos regarding the entire species-Type.

This religious hatred was only fortified when scientists and explorers figured out how to accompany Dark-Types in their disappearances.

That is how humanity first discovered the Distortion, and the poor suckers who came back from those preliminary expeditions were reduced to gibbering, self-mutilating, bipolar nutjobs. After that revelation, we decided to follow the Dark-Types' disappearances with a modified deep-space probe instead of living people.

The only thing that the Distortion probe's optical sensors could detect was an impenetrable black void. Thermal, UV, EM, Radar, Sonar, Laser, Motion, you name it. Each and every one of those sensor couldn't pick up anything but a vacant darkness.

And the only thing that the audio recording hardware could hear was static. Mixed with something that sounded an awful lot like chanting underlaid with screaming.

Yeah, we really don't want to follow anymore Dark-Types into the Distortion ever again. Just in case the Distortion really is Hell.

To this day, Dark-Types are still regarded with more suspicion than any other species-Type of mon. And humanity still leans towards illogical hatred instead of rationalized hatred. But if it means anything to you, Rangers actually love Dark-Types. Most Dark-Types are fiercely loyal once broken, and are unique amongst all other mon for one very specific reason. Dark-Types are the Rangers best offense against the single most dangerous species-Type of mon known to man. And that species-Type is coming up soon.

Number three on the F5 list. Poison-Types. Historically justified, if presently skewed.

There are two different kinds of Poison-Type mon. The typical Venomous kind, and the unnatural Pollutant kind.

The Venomous mon species range anywhere from Arboks to Zubats. These kind of mon produce venom, or they have access to some manner of enzyme dispersal. Venomous mon are quite common, and are generally no more dangerous than any other species-Type. They'll just kill you with virulent biological agents instead of physical violence or temperature fluctuations. Even my beloved Vauban is a Venomous mon. Her blood is toxic, and the shit in Vauban's bulb can easily fuck up some of the toughest mon on the planet. Despite their repulsive means of killing prey, Venomous mon don't really bother me, or most anyone else, anymore than non-Venomous mon.

Pollutants though? Those are the same mon that drove humanity almost to the point of extinction following the Brink Collapse.

Pollutants are physiologically comprised out of seemingly non-biological materials. Normally raw chemicals. Really dangerous chemicals. Basically, the Pollutants are sludge given sentience. Most of the Pollutant mon are nothing more than a supercolony of silicon-based single cell organisms that have developed a crude nervous systems via cellular-specialization. Being silicon-based life-forms, the Pollutants have evolved with foreign cellular chemical composites, most of which are allergenic or even mutagenic to the far more common carbon-based life-forms. Trainers who use Pollutants typically wear environmental hazmat suits as casual attire. Even with that level of protection, Pollutant Trainers will regularly end up wretched sick, and they will most likely die young from cancer.

Pollutants eat and replicate in toxic waste. Pre-Brink humanity cooked up a smorgasbord for the Pollutants ahead of their unforeseen arrival. Mankind had been destroying the planet for centuries, generating massive amounts of waste while doing so, well before the Brink even showed up. Back in the day, humanity relied on combustion to supply our energy needs in the Pre-Brink era, which altered the atmosphere with an imbalanced chemistry. We even dumped our refuse into landfills rather than recycle the materials for new purposes, which increased the deterioration of Earth's ecosystem. Then the Brink appeared.

And when the Brink Collapsed, the Pollutants ate all of our trash up.

Which was anything but beneficial.

The Pollutants bloomed. Big time. Humanity's greatest cities were swimming in Muks, Garbodors, and Wheezings. Those mon can kill you just by existing in your immediate vicinity for too long, and we had seas of Muks spawning in the most populous regions of mankind.

And we just kept feeding them. It took us three-hundred years after the Brink Collapse to finally figure it out, and kick combustion as our primary energy solution. We shut down every manufacturing plant and power station over night. We blew up every one of our refineries and fracking pits in the span of a day. Humanity put itself in a Dark Age, just to starve the Pollutants out. Just because we had no other solution that could possibly prevent our species's extinction.

 _That's how bad the mon were kicking our asses._

Pollutants are still somewhat common in the old Pre-Brink industrial centers, soaking up the caustic materials that are still weathering their half-lives out. Humanity has abandoned these facilities, and indeed, the surrounding lands. But unfortunately, Grimers and Koffings occasionally leave these Pre-Brink manufacturing graveyards, and wander out into the rest of the world. And all these stray Pollutants need to do in order to become a defcon-one threat to mankind again…

-Is dig up some offshoot Pre-Brink waste storage facility, and then start blooming and evolving into plague proportions.

Number four on the F5 list might surprise you. It was put there by the Irish originally, but mankind forgot the lore of the past in favor of reinventing an old concept for profit intended purposes. Thank you, Walt Disney.

I am of course, referring to the lunatics.

Fairies.

Fairies are dissimilar from most other species of mon in one very specific trait.

They'll charm humans with freakishly humanesque behaviors…

-Right before the Fairy graphically murders their human prey.

The Irish were right. Fairies are not benevolent and innocently mischievous creatures put on earth to aid mankind.

Fairies are vicious little psychopaths that will skin you alive just because they enjoy hearing you scream. Fairies will sing an infant child a soothing lullaby, right before they devour said child alive. Fairies will seduce you with the raunchiest of kinky sex, and at the moment of climax, rip your heart right out of your chest; then giggle sweetly while they apply your lifeblood to their faces like it's a cosmetic.

Fairies are evil. Fairies like making humans suffer. It is an inborn trait of the Fairy species to play with their victims in the most sensual and sentimental ways conceivable, before they mercilessly slaughter their prey. Fairies will mirthfully kill humans as if their lives are nothing more than the visceral punchline to a joke. They won't even eat their victims half of the time. Fairies will hunt and kill for pleasure, not just sustenance, and no amount of training can overcome that instinctive behavior. You could wake up one day and realize that you have trained a Fairy for half a century without one Fairy-like incident occurring throughout your entire union, and for no reason whatsoever, your best mon-friend will still make a messy nest for itself in your abdominal cavity later that night while the two of you are sleeping together.

Rangers do not utilize Fairies; just because the Fairy species is inherently unstable. Rangers refuse to use mon that are so naturally inclined to becoming lethal liabilities. Not all Trainers feel this way, and Fairies seem to dig humans just as crazy as they are. Most Fairy Trainers are insane as well, often incapable of differentiating reality from fantasy, and these Trainers are just as likely to hug you as they are disposed towards stabbing you. But the Fairy-Freaks of today are nothing compared to humanity's past interactions with the Fairy-Types.

At least most Fairy Trainers don't practice paraphilia anymore.

Some Fairy species were once used as exotic concubines, just because Gardevoirs, Kirlias, and Florgesia _really_ liked to get it on with humans. We even fucked creepy doll-like mon such as Aromatisseia, Slurpuffs, Mawiles, Whimsicottia, Mr. Mimes, and Azumarills back in the day. It took humanity all of about a decade to wisen up. We stopped making harems out of mon when mon-harems started making delis out of us.

Because of their deceptive and uncontrollable behaviors, as well as their inclination to organize strategically in spite of their various species' differences, Fairies made the F5 list for being a possible threat to more than just the individual human. They are the only Pokemon species-Type that possess the capability to wage war like humanity does.

Number five on the F5 list. Everybody already knows what it is. The very last species of mon that you ever want to encounter.

The Ghosts.

Ghosts are as unnatural as reality can get. There is nothing remotely sensible about the Ghosts. They don't exhibit a single behavior that supports rationality. Unlike everything else in the world, Ghosts didn't evolve to survive and establish dominance within their environment.

Ghosts evolved only to spread misery, terror, and death throughout all of existence.

The Ghosts are drawn to death and tragedy like Mothims to a flame, and when they find that mortal woe, they exacerbate it.

You can't befriend Ghosts. You can't intimidate Ghosts. You can't catch Ghosts. You can't train Ghosts. You can't see Ghosts half of the time, and you can't even permanently kill them without utilizing some pretty extravagant means.

Ghosts do not hunt like any other creature known to man. Ghosts do not stalk and kill their prey quickly and efficiently, like every other predator on the planet attempts to. Ghosts will torture their prey to death, sometimes tormenting their victims for years before finally killing them. Ghosts are fully capable of performing speedy executions, but for the sake of malice, they won't kill quickly. Their alien minds don't even operate using the same basic principles that all natural organisms possess. They aren't worried about survival or reproduction. Ghosts just exist to cause endless suffering.

Life is just sustenance for the Ghosts. All life, human and mon. Having your life siphoned by a Ghost is excruciatingly painful, but the life tap is made even more agonizing by the Ghosts' appetite for emotions as well.

We once thought that life expectancy was primarily determined by how many divisions your cells are programmed to perform, before they cease replication and allow your body to waste away in something that we refer to as 'aging.'

Thanks to the Ghosts and their feeding methods, we now know that there is another intangible factor at play in the passage of life and death.

Maybe there is a soul, I don't rightly know, but whatever it is…

The Ghosts drain it out of their victims and consume it, killing their prey in the process, leaving no ascertainable cause of death.

We can't kill Ghosts with normal means. They exist half in our realm, half in the Distortion.

Simultaneously.

Which means that if you encounter a Ghost, and you dispel said Ghost's corporeal form in our realm...

You didn't kill it. All that you managed to do was temporarily banish the son of a bitch back into the Distortion. The dispelled Ghost will eventually return to our realm, seeking the individual who banished them.

And the Ghost will be ravenous.

And it will feed from you, in a drawn out and excruciating process known as 'haunting.'

Then you have to make a choice. Submit and let the Ghost devour you, or fight back.

Unfortunately, there are only two ways to rid yourself of a haunting.

One, the proper method, is to incite a skilled Dark-Type into pursuing the Ghost through the Distortion; and have the Dark-Type kill the evil fucker inside of the alternate realm as well.

Two, the improper method, is to have another Ghost eat the one haunting you; and pray that the newly empowered primeval spirit doesn't decide to put your ass on the menu next. But regardless of your prayers, it will haunt you.

Most hauntings end in death for the victim, but not before the Ghost subjects their meal to abject agony and puerile hopelessness.

Ghosts have had some pretty adverse effects on both humanity and the world. Even other mon hate and fear Ghosts. Ghosts will eat anything that lives, and torture it beforehand. Some mon can't even hurt the Ghosts' corporeal forms, making themselves just as easy a meal for the Ghosts as we humans do. And Ghosts don't just sporadically appear and start haunting at random.

Not at all.

Ghosts will bait their selected prey.

Ever wonder why parents burn their children's abandoned dolls and stuffed animals?

Because Banettes and Shuppets will haunt those toys, and revisit their previous owners for some nostalgic playtime. Followed by a crucifixion.

Have you ever wonder why you can't purchase purple balloons in stores, and why children are told not to touch said nonexistent purple balloons?

Because Drifloons imitate balloons, just so that they can steal children away on a fantastic flight. Which is followed by a high-altitude strangulation.

Those are just two of the best known examples of the Ghosts and their hauntings. There are plenty of other forms of haunting that are not so easy to deter. Gastlys wake sleeping children in their cribs, and then smother the children when they try to scream. Duskulls play elusive, and guide curious children into the woods, then lose said child in the wild; haunting them while they starve. Litwicks offer a light for lost children to chase at night, and then immolate the child when they are left breathless and panicking. Misdreavia literally sing children to death using their eldritch music to inflict growing depression and lethal illness. Froslassia will offer a comforting embrace to children who become lost in winter storms, if only for the Froslass to linger over freezing their victims to death in their motherly hold. Yamasks will offer their masks to children, and if the child accepts and wears the mask, then the Yamask will kill the child by rotting them from the inside out. Frillish present themselves as a flotation assistance to children in deep water. Once a fearful or tired child grabs hold of the vibrantly colored bell, the Frillish will slowly constrict the child and let them struggle themselves into exhaustion, before drowning the child beneath the water.

Noticing a theme? All of the aforementioned Ghosts all have the capability to instantly kill human adults effortlessly, but they instead target children and torture them to death.

And those are the little Ghosts. The big revenants are much more elaborate in their methods, and much more varied in their victims.

Yet despite all of this, people still attempt to train Ghost-Types.

Now, I know what you're thinking…

"I've seen Ghosts used in competition before, so they can be trained, right?"

No. They can't. Those Ghosts aren't trained.

They're sustained.

There is a way to control Ghosts. I don't know how it is done, nor do I want to. Rangers do not use Ghosts, and neither does the Military. Only the worst kind of self-destructive freaks seek to control Ghost-Types.

It's called 'Channeling.'

It's something of an occult ritual performed by suicidal wackos.

Channeling shares a lot of similarities with demonic possession.

Ghost Trainers do not break the evil spirits in order to get them under their control.

They feed them.

With their own lifeforce.

It is a limited bleed, but the human host effectively imparts a constant dribble of their own lifeforce into a Ghost parasite.

One 'Channel' will decrease your total life expectancy by an estimated twelve years. Multiple 'Channels' will compound that. Most Championship Ghost Trainers limit themselves to a maximum of three Channels, which is still three Channels too many. On top of that, Channeled Ghosts can't be killed so long as their host lives, so it is an irrevocable haunting. Not even Dark-Types can slay a Channeled Ghost. The Trainer acts as an interdimensional anchor, effectively preventing the Ghost from being utterly destroyed.

Which means that there is no escape for Ghost Trainers after they perform a Channeling. That one mistake will haunt the Trainer for the rest of their miserable existence, never to be undone.

While a Ghost devours their host's life, they'll also be sampling their humanity, making the Ghost Trainer into a soulless abomination in the process. Ghost-Type Trainers aren't exactly human after a prolonged Channel. They lose sight of compassion, empathy, restraint, morality…

Pretty much everything that makes a good human. Ghost Trainers end up becoming monstrous and malevolent creatures themselves, just like their Ghosts. And when it's time for a Channeled Ghost to draw the last drop of life from their Trainers…

The Ghost will drag their Trainer into the Distortion to savor that final feast.

In some circles, 'Channeling' has become synonymous with 'Selling your soul.'

There was a time when Channeling was amongst the most severe of social taboos. People who threw in with the Ghosts were commonly put to death for aligning themselves with such hideously evil creatures.

But then we found out what happens when a Channeled Ghost is prematurely emancipated.

They generate a Distortion rift, and drag everything around them into the Distortion along with their dying Trainers.

The more Ghosts Channeled by the condemned Trainer, the more volatile the engendered Distortion rift grows, and any Distortion rift is as unpredictable as all hell.

We don't know if the 'Death Curse' was a clause added to the Channeling ritual as some form of vengeful protection for the Trainer, or if it's just a natural reaction to the sudden influx of life that the Ghost consumes when the Trainer dies; but we do know that killing a Ghost Trainer is a really bad idea. So we no longer execute the damned souls who wield Ghosts.

But we sure as hell would like to.

There is plenty of other superstitions regarding Ghost-Types. Some people believe, due to the Ghost's unnatural existences and their Distortion origins-

-That the Distortion is Hell, and the Ghosts are damned human souls trying to escape it.

Despite the lack of evidence, it has become something of a fervent belief within certain societies.

Lavender Town plays host to the most infamous of the eidolon-veneration cults in the Indigo Confederacy. The denizens of Lavender Town worship the Ghosts as if they were deceased ancestors and fallen heroes from the past. A discernable reason that reinforces the 'Guardian Spirits' belief can be found in Lavender Town's lack of exterior defenses.

Lavender Town is the only human settlement in all of the world to forgo the standard outlying bastion walls.

Lavender Town and its religious inhabitants do not need walls to protect themselves from the feral mon. The Ghosts of Memorial Tower and the surrounding graveyards generate such an overwhelming aura of dread, that it keeps even the Delta-Fives at bay. The haunting in Lavender Town is so prevalent, that the Distortion actually seeps into our realm and warps the surrounding lands. And as if to compound the crazy, the religious hierarchy of Lavender Town intentionally performs Channeling rituals in order to become 'closer to the spirits.'

I still can't believe that the Rangers protect that looney bin from their own religion.

The original F5 list was was scrapped when the Rangers adopted it. We altered the list to only include species of mon that warranted careful handling and specific preparation before engagement. While species-Typing is still a major factor, the new F5 list did away with most of the Poison-Types and the Dark-Types, and inserted the vast majority of the Dragon-Types into the fold. All to account for the Dragon's inborn urge to dominate being far more dangerous to the environment than a Dark-Type's ability to navigate the Distortion.

But the Venomoths are still on the F5 list. Primarily because their migratory patterns and mating seasons can cause just as much damage to the ecosystem as the Pollutants' blooming.

And Viridian Forest is one of the Venomoths' favorite mating grounds.

…

Viridian Forest is a Reserve. Most people assume that the use of the term 'Reserve' still coincides with the Pre-Brink connotation. To a certain degree, it does.

But Reserves do not exist for the same reason that the Pre-Brink Reservations did.

While it is true that humanity has set aside numerous geographical areas for a variety of Pokemon species, the fact is, we didn't part with that land for monkind's preservation.

We only built the Reserves for mankind's preservation.

One of the many adaptations our species had to make when the mon knocked us off our dominant species throne, was an acceptance of the mon's appropriation of our land masses and the distribution of their resources.

I.E. We let the Pokemon take the first pick on the real estate front in order to prevent a conflict that would lead to our extinction.

Our cities were built in the areas that the mon left alone. Back in the Post-Brink Dark Age, we figured out what happens when humanity tries to build a settlement on the mon's turf.

The settlement ends up destroyed, and the inhabitants wind up slaughtered.

Mon come from a dimension where might makes right. Their entire Para-Kingdom has evolved for spontaneous genetic adaptations in order to cope with lifelong conflict. Conflict on a scale that humanity can't even replicate with our most heartless and widespread of wars.

Every mon strives for total mastery. Every one of them is equipped to obtain it. Every last Pokemon seeks absolute dominance, and they will casually kill to establish it.

Mankind has only managed to persist in this altered world, where so many other indigenous species have failed, due to our unrivaled ability to adapt our behaviors in time frames that no other creature alive can hope to imitate. Because humanity has evolved for 'problem solving,' our species alone of Earth's original evolutionary history has endured the Brink Collapse mostly unchanged.

Only a handful of other terran-originated lifeforms have been able to do the same. And most of those species are insects and bacteria.

By giving the mon their space, humanity has found a survival adaptation in appeasement. The Reserves are areas where humanity's secure Routes penetrate the mon's sovereign and chaotic Frontiers. Most of the the Reserves have heavily defended paths that lead from one human haven to the next, but even then…

Humanity's defenses weren't enough to protect us from the mon while we were still in our prime, and our adapted methods certainly aren't guaranteed failsafes now.

So why don't we simply torch the Reserves, and kill every mon living inside of them?

Because we can't. Mon are too diverse in species and tolerances, and they are quick to evolve when confronted with violence. They would survive the destruction of their homestead, and behave like all other life when confronted with starvation and displacement.

If humanity burned down Viridian Forest, every mon living in the Reserve would need a new place to live. As it stands, both Viridian City and Pewter City would likely be next on the mon's list of preferred habitats, due to the surplus of 'food' living in those two locations.

And we do not have the means necessary to deny the mon's advance.

To protect what little we have, humanity is forced to give as much as we can to the Pokemon.

…

It took me four days of easy marching to make my way from Viridian Prime Outpost to Pewter City. Which is a pretty respectable pace for walking. But to get back to the M-straight from Pewter City's gates?

It took me a little more than one day. How did I cover that distance so quickly with only my feet?

I wasn't walking. And I sure as hell wasn't sleeping.

It wasn't the brightest idea. My lungs could barely take the strain, and my legs were left throbbing in agony when I finally stopped for a rest outside Viridian Forest's northern checkpoint.

The Rangers had closed off the M-straight. The only way through the Viridian Forest was by electric train, and tickets for the shuttle were extremely expensive. Needless to say, most folk weren't to happy with the Rangers for the sudden inconvenience.

But people are rarely happy when you try to prevent them from committing suicide.

The Venomoths were still in the early stages of arrival. Right now, there were only a handful of Venomoth colonies, all of which generally clung to the interior of the Frontier. The Venomoth would be resting after their migratory journey. Some had come from the Fuchsia district's Enamour Bay, and others had flown here all the way from Johto's Lake of Rage. The Venomoth were too exhausted for mating, and the early May weather was still far too cold for the germination of eggs. Thousands of the Venomoths were establishing their presence in the Viridian Forest, while tens of thousands were still on their way.

It was the perfect time to strike.

Weary Venomoths do not put up much of a struggle, indeed chilly nights can render them almost comatose, and the Rangers needed to cull as many as possible before the Venomoth began to spawn.

...

Venomoth are notoriously toxic. The Venomoths' white blood is a favored poison amongst the Fuschia Ninja clan, and the tar-like secretion regurgitated by the Venomoths is caustic enough to corrode steel. To top the poisonous bile off, Venomoths are one of the few non-Psychic Pokemon to possess latent Psionic abilities. Namely Cognitive-Incapacitation, granting Venomoths another deadly weapon for their already formidable arsenal. But the most terrifying element in the Venomoth armory is the dusty scales from their wings. Venomoth wing dust is lethally allergenic when exposed to any organism that doesn't possess a natural constitution to necrotoxic enzymes.

Which is pretty much everything that isn't a Venomoth.

Venomoth wing dust is so vile that not even the Ninjas of Fuchsia will attempt extract it for poisoning purposes. It's just too risky. The dust is so fine that it can stay airborne for weeks after being dispersed, and a few centigrams of the stuff is enough to kill you.

Slowly, which is another reason for why the Ninjas don't like it.

A necrotic infection is treatable, but if not addressed within the first three days of exposure…

The septic shock induced by the rotting of living tissues effectively cuts the odds of survival in half. The necrosis is terminal if the infection shuts down your liver.

Those dust scales shed naturally whenever a Venomoth flaps its wings, which is anytime the Venomoth moves.

And when thousands of Venomoth congregate in a single area for the purpose of courting…

You can see the dust falling in glittering clouds, killing everything beneath the Venomoths' shadow.

…

I shouldered my way through a crowd of bellyaching civilians picketing before the M-straight's northern checkpoint. Of course, when they saw my beret, the ignoramuses just about broke out in a riot as they rushed towards me to voice their complaints.

"Open the gate, already! I have to get back to Viridian in-"

"-I have a very important conference to attend, and if you don't let me-"

"-YOU RANGERS ARE ABUSING YOUR ROLE-"

"-Hey! Ranger! Tell your 'friends' in Command to unbar the fucking gate-"

"-I'VE ALREADY PHONED MY LAWYER! WE HAVE FOUND GROUNDS-"

"-I heard the reports! The Venomoth just started showing up! You can't-"

"-MISAPPROPRIATION OF AUTHORITY-"

"-I will hold you financially accountable for any-!"

"-WE'LL SEE YOU IN COURT!"

I lost my temper pretty quickly in that crowd. Vauban was out in a flash, and no sooner had she appeared, than my voice was intoning an order.

"VAUBAN! FIRE A FLARE! LOW ALTITUDE!" Vauban had been released in far more chaotic situations, most of which barely gave my little girl more than a second to react to a life or death crisis.

This wasn't one of those events. Vauban had plenty of time and security to aim her bulb appropriately.

Vauban's flare seed lit up the entire vicinity with a vibrant green blinding light. The seed never exceeded sternum level height. The flash was sufficiently bright and sporadic enough to induce massive headaches to anyone not protecting their eyes. Needless to say, I was the only one in that crowd covering my single functioning eye.

Vauban and I walked calmly up to the gate, ignoring the civilians' groans. Most of them were on their backs, clutching at their eye sockets and bashing the rear of their skulls off of the ground in a vain attempt to alleviate the pain.

I almost pitied them.

"Holy shit! Bastard?" One befuddled Walkout on the other side of the gate recognised me.

"Do I need to radio Command for clearance, or are you going to save me the trouble, Jensen?" I growled to the Firewatch unit.

"-No! I'll pop the gate! Did you just-?"

"Passively restrain a group of rioters? Yes. Now crack the fucking hatch." I grumbled. Jensen quickly punched in his code, and the gate opened.

"For God's sake, Bastard… Somebody might have had a seizure…" Private Jensen could only gape at my handiwork.

"If I was them, I'd be more concerned about a wicked case of sunburn. If they don't vacate that seed's immediate radius soon, the UVs are going to cook their hides red." I was speaking loud enough for the recovering civilians to hear, and to my satisfaction, I watched as the mobile ones put down a lengthy distance between themselves and ground zero.

"Well, at least _you_ broke them up. Some of those people know my mother…" Jensen muttered, apparently grateful that I'd saved him from the task of dispersing his mother's associates. I returned Vauban to her Pokeball with a sigh.

Walkouts, and their misappropriate priorities.

Good to be home again.

"-Wait! Please wait!" The gate was almost closed when one civilian rushed for the breach. I saved Jensen the trouble of restraining a possible family friend by intercepting the man's lunge with a fist to the solar plexis.

"The M-straight is closed to civilian traffic until the Venomoth situation is contained. The Viridian Reserve is currently under martial law. Any attempt to unlawfully traverse the Viridian Reserve will be regarded as a hostile encroachment, and met with the appropriate force. I recommend that you backtrack to Pewter City and purchase a ticket for-"

"-My daughter-" The man desperately gasped at my knees. I froze. The man was crying. And obviously not from my blow.

"What about your daughter?" I asked.

"Bastard, don't you think-?" I silenced Jensen's recital on protocol with a look.

"-Ranger- She's a Ranger-" The man wheezed. I groaned. Jensen was right.

"Your family relations do not grant you any privileges-"

"Dead… She died yesterday…" The man was sobbing now, cutting my rebuttal short. I shot another look at Jensen.

"There were two casualties reported yesterday. What were their names?" I asked Jensen in an iron tone. Jensen swallowed, but found his tongue quickened by my severe glare.

"Sergeant Castella Monovo, and Private Elizabeth Stein." Jensen reported.

"My little Lizzy…" The man was weeping on the ground. His breath had returned, if only to feed his grief. I looked back over at Jensen.

"Are there any available Firewatch units that can escort a civilian to Prime Outpost?" I asked. Jensen shook his head.

"We're stationed at the north checkpoint with explicit orders to maintain our posts. But down the road-" I knelt down and assisted the civilian to his feet, and pulled him past the gate.

"Lock it." I ordered Jensen. The four Walkouts stationed at the checkpoint quickly bolted the maglocks.

"Mister Stein, If you will follow me, I will direct you to a Ranger capable of guiding you safely to Prime Outpost. Jensen, you and the rest of your Firewatch units maintain the perimeter." I was curt with all of them, and headed south as soon as my orders had been conveyed. The civilian hurried to catch up.

I was silent as the pair of us continued down the M-straight. But no sooner than we had left the northern checkpoint in the dust, than the civilian accompanying me spoke up.

"-Ranger Zane? Did you know my daughter?" The man asked, in a heartbroken voice.

"Can't say that I did. Was she transferred from the academy?" I asked. The man was crying without restraint now.

"She just graduated. Infantry. She wanted to serve on the frontlines… I begged her not to…" The civi was collapsing under his grief. I couldn't say anything.

This was just another child in a grave.

I should have been used to it by now.

"Why?" The man pleaded my unspoken question. I still didn't have an answer.

Another father left behind to bury his child.

Why did it come to this so often?

"We're approaching a detachment now. I'll find a Ranger that will see you safely to Prime Outpost." My voice was hoarse, and I struggled to conceal the emotion on sight of a troop. Some of the Rangers were serving as support and wardens, dressed in the standard BDUs. The others were preparing for assault, garbed in bulky hazmat suits. I joined a heated discussion being exchanged between a BDU and a hazmat.

"-They're already fucked! I don't care what Command says! I'm not going back in there to pull their corpses out!"

"The Radio chatter from team seven is still active! They're still alive and fighting! They need reinforcements! You have to back them up!"

"FUCK THAT, YOU FIELD-TECH SHIT! I DON'T SEE YOU SUITING UP TO FIGHT THE FUCKING VENO-!" That was as far as I was letting that hazmat unit go. My fist connected firmly with the side of his head, knocking him out of the debate.

"What's this about radio chatter?" I asked the BDU clad Field-Tech. The Walkout didn't recognise me, but despite this, he smelled a Veteran's attitude in my right hook.

"Team seven is calling for reinforcements. They're stuck in sector Delta, pinned down by the Venomoth. Aviation can't reach them through the Venomoths' haze. -Sir." The Walkout quickly added the etiquette. The hazmat unit was getting back up.

"How long has there been chatter on the Comms?" I asked, getting riled up. The Walkout swallowed.

"Sir… The comms have been roaring nonstop since yesterday morning-"

"Why the hell hasn't my radio gone off?!" I roared, unfastening my radio from my breast and flinging it into the dirt.

"Radio. Now." I demanded of the pale Walkout. He quickly undid his Comm-unit and handed it to me. I opened the channel to hails.

"-WE LOST ANOTHER UNIT! WE CAN'T LAST MUCH LONGER! COMMAND, WE NEED SUPPORT NOW! THE VENOMOTH ARE-" I cut the feed. My civilian companion was bug eyed and white-faced. I thrust the radio back at the Field-Tech, and dragged hazmat unit over to my person, before lifting his ass into the air.

"So you're just gonna let them die, are you Ranger?" My voice had gone lethal. The hazmat unit was too terrified to speak. I dropped his ass in disgust.

"You, Private!" I growled at the nervous Field-Tech.

"Find this civilian an escort to Prime Outpost. Do it yourself if you are able. Corporal-" I rounded on the hazmat unit next.

"You're coming with me. Direct me to a scrub station for suit up. Gather every other available hazmat unit in the area and prepare for a blitz into sector Delta. WE MOVE OUT NOW!" I roared my order, and everybody split. I was on the Corporal's ass without even saying goodbye to the mourning civi.

Three minutes later, I was in my own hazmat suit, and having the environmental precautions checked by the four hazmat units that we had mustered together for the forray.

"Radio ahead to the Delta-Guard. Tell them to have the gate popped. I'm not waiting for clearance." I barked to the Corporal, whose cowardly ass I had dragged into the rescue effort. I was settling in for a foul mood. I had just put on the hazmat gear, and I was already sweating like a Pignite.

"Game plan, unit." I growled as we set off towards sector Delta's gate.

"Team seven is approximately three klicks east of the gate. They've found cover from the Venomoth, but the bugs are using their psionics to break team seven's mental constitution. Team seven were rigging a collection of thermite slow-burners around the swarm, but their Sapper unit was detected by the Venomoth and systematically obliterated. After that, team seven's CO ushered a retreat, but the Venomoth cut them off. Last sit-rep had them holed up in a crevice, half a click east of the Sung river, moments after the CO was KIA." One of the hazmat units informed me.

"Fucking idiots… Why a fucking trench?! The dust will drown their environmentals!" Now I was pissed, and the hazmat suit's claustrophobic interior wasn't helping ease the tension.

"The Venomoths' psionics are affecting everyone's heads. Apparently, team seven's CO killed himself by pulling off his rebreather. He was a Vet. And the Venomoths fucked his brain up good."

"How the hell has team seven lasted this long?" I asked, trucking my ass towards the south.

"A Seeker Class was in the CO's roster. A Kadabra. It's been shielding team seven with a Safeguard. But it's running out of power. The Kadabra is being overwhelmed by the Venomoths' swarm mind psionics. Team seven isn't going to last without that Seeker Class." I waved the info-providing hazmat unit over.

"What's your name?"

"Lance Corporal Christine-"

"Right, seeing as you have a grasp on the situation, Christine, you're my number two. Any of you dumbasses even think about bailing, and I will kill you for desertion. Now list off what we got." I hissed.

"Two Siege Classifications. One Bouffalant, and one Donphan. We have a Zangoose Scout, and an Excadrill Breacher." Christine reported.

"Get that Excadrill and Zangoose out the instant we cross the gate. Hold the Bouffalant and Donphan on standby for engagement. My Hunter-Killer will get us there. We are proceeding with all due haste. Forget discretion. We have the firepower to handle anything that we come across in the Frontier. Get me a radio, stat!" I roared, stretching out an arm. Christine wired her Comm unit into my rig, and I punched in team seven's designated channel from my wrist mounted tactical display. Delta Gate was coming into view, and the Firewatch units on guard duty had already opened the door for us.

"-COMMAND, WE'RE GETTING OUR SHIT PUSHED IN! LAPIS IS ALMOST DONE FOR! I REPEAT, OUR SEEKER CLASS IS FAILING! WE NEED BACKUP-"

"Team seven, this is backup! We read you loud and clear! We are entering sector-Delta as we speak! You need to abandon the trench! I repeat! You need to abandon the trench! Make a rush for the Sung river! We'll meet you there! Do you copy?! Over!" I spoke into the hazmat suit's headset while Cortez, an Excadrill, and a Zangoose joined our numbers.

"CORTEZ! I NEED A HEADING! EAST! MAKE FOR THE RIVER! FIND ME SOME VENOMOTH!" I shouted to my Hunter-Killer, and faithful Cortez responded with all due urgency.

"Backup, this is team seven! We're trying to move out, but some of our units-"

"LEAVE THEM BEHIND! GET YOUR ASSES TO THE RIVER NOW! OVER!"

I couldn't believe that it was my voice making that call. It was by my own order that those lost Rangers were being condemned to death.

My conscious need be the only one to bear the sin.

Then I remembered my Echo.

"Delay previous order! Have your Seeker leave a Safeguard for those left behind! Draw as many of the Venomoth away from the ravine as possible! Tie a rope to the trench and leave me a line to follow! Over!"

No.

I would make it right this time.

I would save the lost Rangers.

Or I would die with them.

"Roger that, backup! We are making our retreat! Over!"

"Get those Siege Classes deployed as soon as we see the river! I want them primed and ready for a scrapping! Slings out now! Cortez-!" I was barking orders to my Rangers first, and then turning to my dog. My four Rangers had traded their knives for slings. Which were useless against most mon, but the delicate wings of the Venomoth didn't take very well to being hit with a fourteen millimeter tungsten ball bearing travelling through the air at one-hundred-and-eighteen meters per second.

"-Cortez! Lead the Scout on intercept! Locate the retreat! We can find our own way! I want you and the Zangoose breaking up the Venomoth! Get the Venomoth off of team seven's tail! Engage to distract, and then get the hell out of there! Regroup with the retreat once you shake the heat! Do it NOW!" I hollered, and both the Zangoose and Cortez tore off into the Frontier.

"DON'T YOU DARE DIE ON ME, CORTEZ!" I roared after my dog, just before his speed separated him from me.

"I can hear the river! Deploy the Siege classes!" A shaggy Bouffalant and a stout Donphan appeared in time with my order. I pulled out my little girl, and added her to the troop.

"Vauban! Use your flares to draw off the Venomoth! Then assist the Siege classes in scrapping the stragglers! Christine-!"

"Yes, sir!"

"-You are going to fall back as soon as the Venomoth are subdued! We are not aiming for a slaughter! Get our Rangers to safety! And don't you dare get my little girl hurt! Corporal-!"

"Yes sir!"

"I'm borrowing your Breacher! My hound and the Zangoose will cover you in the retreat! Vauban! Once we make it to the shore, fire a flare!" We were almost out of the trees, and at the banks of the Sung river. Everything was coming together.

Now it was time to see if I was as suicidal as my last psyche evaluation suggested that I was.

"What's your Breacher's callsign?!" I roared to the spineless Corporal.

"Brass!" The Corporal replied.

"Brass, you are with me! Prepare to separate from the unit and advance!" I shouted at the Excadrill, who readily complied to my orders, and fell in at my side.

It's unbelievable how much more a Ranger some mon are than their COs.

"Fire that flare now, Vauban!" My little girl was just waiting for my command. The flare took off at high altitude, generating a light that could be seen clearly from Viridian City.

"Team seven! Do you see the marker?! Come in, Over!"

"Copy that, backup! We see your flare! We are plotting an intercept now! Over!"

"North or south?! Over!"

"Your flare is north of our location! The Venomoths are breaking off! Something is attacking them! Fire?! Is that-?!"

"CORTEZ, YOU FINE ASS PIECE OF SHIT! GIVE THOSE WINGED FUCKS HELL! -Over!"

"Unit! We are headed south! Get ready for a fight! Christine, you take Command! Brass, you are on my ass! Let's go!" I tore off at top speed, leaving the winded Walkouts in my dust. Vauban was right behind me, and Brass was taking pole. He may not have been a Pathfinder, but that Excadrill's nose was a damn sight better than mine.

"Stay the hell away from the flares in the retreat! Let them draw the Venomoth off you!" I shouted to the unit behind me.

"Vauban, prep another flare! I want it right in the faces of the Venomoth! Fire as soon as you have a clear shot!" Five seconds after that order, we rounded a bend in the Sung river.

And then we saw the silver cloud of all sparkling hell headed straight for us.

There had to be over a hundred fucking Venomoth in that shining haze.

"Oh shit! Vauban now! FIRE THE FUCKING FLARE NOW!" Vauban launched her phosphorescent seed into the swarm, and a blast of light separated the drove of purple wings.

To my sheer relief, nine terran-bound shapes separated from the cloud of silver dust. Eight hazmat suits, and one Kadabra sporting a modified rebreather apparatus.

"Seeker! Sync with Vauban! Use your telekinesis to move the flares! Make it fancy! Draw the Venomoth off of me!" I shouted as soon as the unit came upon me.

"Seeker, give me and the Excadrill a Safeguard! Then all of you follow the north flare! Get the hell out of sector Delta! Don't wait up for me!" The Kadabra looked exhausted and confused, but his mind had been disciplined by the Ranger's training. He heard my order, and cast his shimmering psychic voodoo over me and Brass. We may have been kitted out for environmental hazards, but I wanted every ounce of protection that I could get.

"Vauban, accompany them out of here! I'm counting on you and Cortez to get them home! Go! Start the flare distraction now!" I saw my little girl hesitate.

She didn't want to leave me.

My prompt foot in her face reminded Vauban of who I was.

"GET THEM OUT OF HERE!" I tore off with Brass, and headed straight into the Venomoth cloud. A flare fired overhead, and started dancing wildly in the air, in a fashion that Vauban could never dictate.

The Kadabra and Vauban made quite a spectacle. Enough of one to draw the vast majority of Venomoth across the opposite side of the river.

Bugs like the light. Bugs like moving lights. Bugs like moving lights even more than they like killing me.

"We have an opening, Brass! Find me the rest of the Rangers!" Brass resumed pole, and gave me a heading. I was going to follow him to the ravine, just the two of us plunging into the Brink.

For better or for worse.

…

It wasn't to hard to find a trail that led to the ravine. I didn't even need Brass's nose to guide me.

The Venomoths' wing dust was already killing everything that they had flown over in a clearly marked path.

It was almost beautiful.

The fallout, I mean.

Silver sparkles descending slowly, catching the fading sunlight in a glittering trickle.

It looked like platinum snow, drifting lazily down to the wilting earth.

Then I remembered how lethal this shit was, and the magic quickly lost its charm.

"Come on, Brass. We need to hurry." I begged haste from my steely companion. Excadrills have an insane tolerance for toxins. All Steel-Types do. It was one of the reasons why I had chosen Brass over any other mon available. Both Vauban and the Zangoose had similar toxin-resistant constitutions, but I needed an Excadrill's digging skills.

Because Vauban would never have been able to shift that much dust out of the ravine as quickly as Brass could.

I found the rope. It had been tied to a stump on the bank, and it led all the way over to a glittering pit. Brass dug in without even waiting for my order. That toxic shit was meters deep. The Venomoth must have used their psionics to concentrate the dispersal directly onto the Rangers. Brass reappeared in a flurry of glimmering powder, a pair of hazmat suits in his claws. Brass passed me the Rangers that he had found buried underneath the silver death.

"Ohgawd no…"

The first three bodies that Brass handed to me had their environmental diagnostics displaying dead vitals. I double checked every wrist's tactical display, praying for some bleep of life to wake up and greet the sun.

But they were dead.

So was the fourth.

-But the fifth reached for me when my arms took hold of him.

I was crying as I cradled his head against my shoulder. He was alive. I couldn't believe it. His vitals were irregular, but currently stable. He would need medical attention soon.

But he would live.

The sixth was unconscious, but a few pokes roused her back into the waking world. She was clearly disorientated, probably still reeling from the Venomoths' psionic attacks. I placed her next to the other, laughing with relief when they reached over to hold one another.

The seventh was dead.

The eighth was dead.

The ninth was kicking the shit out of Brass, as the disgruntled Excadrill dragged the panicking Ranger out of the deadly ravine.

"Easy there, Ranger. You're alright. We're getting you out of here." I pulled him up to his feet. He was the liveliest of the three, and Brass wasn't going back into the ravine. Nine Rangers was it.

Six dead.

Three alive.

That and the eight further down the river.

Eleven survivors in total.

"Ease up, Private." I spoke softly, dusting off the Ranger's insignia.

"Are you coherent?" I asked the staggered youth.

"Am I seeing things?" He asked, his voice desperate. I laughed.

"I'll take that as an affirmative. Congratulations. You survived a Venomoth hazing. You're alive, Ranger. Now help me sort the other two out." I turned back to the other two Rangers, and began my ministrations.

"All right, Corporal. Good news. You're poisoned. Your environmentals saved you from the worst of it. We have three days to get you medical attention. The M-straight is only twenty-five minutes away. You're going to live." I clapped the first survivor on the shoulder, and turned to the girl.

"...Oh shit." I hissed. Her tactical display was reading faulty environmentals. I checked every outlet for a breach.

Then I saw the scrubber on her rebreather.

It was clogged with dust.

"Fuck." I spat. We couldn't clean that filter out. That shit was choked deep inside the charcoal foam. She was probably suffocating inside of her own hazmat suit.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck-" I knew what I had to do, but I really didn't want to do it. She had already been exposed to a heavy dose of the dust, and she needed clean air fast.

"Fuck!"

-And though my exposure was limited, my lungs were in poor condition.

I unsealed my apparatus, and quickly unfastened the scrubbers on my rebreather. Directing the cognitive Ranger to do the same with her apparatus, I sucked in the first poisoned breath.

That shit started burning in seconds.

I was coughing up a lung when we finally replaced her compromised scrubber with my clean one. Then I dragged them all back up onto their feet and pressed them north, towards the still burning flares.

"Are you gonna be okay, sir?" The cognitive Ranger asked me. I gave him such a sarcastic look that it would have made even Einstein feel stupid. Then I returned to my agonized gagging, pushing them all on.

Of all the stupid things I could have done to kill myself, I had chosen the 'inhale Venomoth wing dust' option.

That shit was probably already in my bloodstream, killing me from the inside out as we headed towards the river.

If I could get medical attention today, I might live. But even then…

-My lungs were already shit. A little bronchial necrosis wasn't so little when you only had two functioning lobes left.

Yeah, I probably wasn't gonna make it.

Too bad I didn't care. Let's get these kids home.

We followed the rope to the river, and I just about collapsed right there.

Two steps later, and I was on the ground.

"Sir!" All three of the Rangers were dragging my ass back up, only to watch me topple again.

Damn.

What a shitty way to die.

"Get going… You can't fucking carry me, kid. I'd just slow you down. Head on without me. I have a stupid idea anyways." I drew my knife, and crawled over to the rope. Cutting it free from the stump, I waved Brass over.

"Cut the rope further down. I need a solid length." I wheezed. Brass busted his ass despite my calm demeanor.

I wasn't feeling so good.

Maybe he could tell?

Brass came back eight seconds later with the rope. The other Rangers still hadn't left me.

"Good boy. Now get them safely outta the Frontier." I told Brass.

The stupid mole hesitated. Brass couldn't lead on pole, fight off the Frontier, and carry my ass all at the same Goddamn time. Besides, he might end up carrying one of the Walkouts home if something happened on the way.

"Brass? See my knife?" I asked with a ragged breath. The Excadrill looked at the blade in my hand curiously. Brass caught on when I swiped at him.

"All of you get going. I don't want to embarrass myself infront of you. NOW GO!" That loud 'go' spent what little breath I had left. But that and my hostility got the unit moving. I crawled towards the river, cursing my stupidity.

I waited until Brass had led the Rangers out of sight, before I made to shame myself in the worst way imaginable.

"Darwin, report." I released my giant joke into the river.

You've probably figured out what I was planning to do.

You can stop laughing now.

"Darwin… I paid a lot of money for you… Saved you from getting stuffed and mounted by a megalomaniac... Now you need to pay me back…" I tied a lash to my waist, and tossed one end of the rope into the water. The gaping fish just stared at me.

"I'm gonna die soon, you fat fuck… but I'm not quitting yet. So you fucking make yourself useful for once in your worthless life, and drag my ass downstream. Get us both to the Crossover… I'll radio Command to prep a body bag for me under the bridge…" I was passing out. The poison was setting in. Darwin hadn't moved, nor shown any signs that he understood my orders.

"Command, this is Bastard… Darwin is bringing my corpse to the Crossover. I am inhaling Venomoth dust as we speak. My last request is that you do not mention that I used a Magikarp-" I heard a ringing in my ears, and a white light started blotting out my vision.

"Darwin, start swimming. Now."

And those were last words of the Fucking Bastard.

...

 _-You wish._

As if a Venomoth could fucking kill me.

...

"..."

"...?"

"It was a stupid idea, Bastard." Colonel Howes's weary voice greeted me as I opened my eyes. A mask was strapped to my face, pumping carbon-enriched oxygen into my lungs. I had an Octillery of IVs dangling from either arm. One glance at my thighs told me why.

I was getting a blood swap. A pair of tubes were buried into both of my Femoral arteries, sucking out the poisonous blood, and diluting my circulatory system with a clean transfusion of donor blood. The carbon being pumped into my lungs was diffusing the Venomoth wing dust through my alveoli, and from there into my bloodstream.

And all of that bad blood was washing away.

"-It worked." I rasped through the mask. I had to swallow just to get spit moving to moisten my cracking throat. The Colonel adjusted his chair so that I could tilt my head to see him.

Look at you, you old man.

You almost look worried.

"I can't believe that a Magikarp saved your life. I'm awarding Darwin with a bloody medal." The Colonel laughed. He didn't look like he'd been sleeping. It was then that I noticed that I wasn't in the sickbay.

My cozy crib was set up in the Colonel's office.

"...How long-"

"Three days." The Colonel cut my question short with the answer. I settled back into the pillows.

"-Did they make it?"

I heard a stack of papers hit the Colonel's desk. Colonel Isaac Howes sighed.

"-Colonel?" I begged.

"You weren't even supposed to be in Viridian, Zane. I gave you a locked-out radio for a reason. Your ass was supposed to be in Pewter, taking down Brock. Not fighting the fucking Venomoth." He was pissed. But I no longer cared. He was working up to something. Something that I didn't want to hear.

"-They died? All of them?" I wheezed, the fear alive in my broken voice. My Cortez. My Vauban. My Walkouts.

All dead?

And I was the only survivor...

Did I fail again?

"Twelve Rangers, a Kadabra, a Growlithe, and a Bulbasaur were collected by the Aviation units just one klick short of sector Delta's access gate. Aviation found another three Rangers and an Excadrill two klicks further in." I stopped breathing. He didn't outright say it. But I knew what the Colonel was trying to tell me.

I just wanted to die.

Why?

Why can't I ever save anyone?

"Everyone of them are in sickbay, and all of them are in a damn sight better condition than you are, I might add." The Colonel sounded pleased.

All the air in my body vacated my lungs in an explosive gasp. I was sobbing in relief.

Everyone was alive.

"You old fuck! Why didn't you just start with that?!" I just about lost the mask in the choking fit that followed my outcry.

"For God's sake, Bastard. Take it easy. You've cleared the woods. We're just waiting for you to recover so that I can have a quiet office again." I heard a guttural chortle. Galapagos hunkered over my bed with an amused look in his eye.

 _That turtle was fucking huge._

"...Why-?"

"The Venomoth are hitting us hard. Sickbay needs all the available beds that they can get. You no longer qualify as critical condition, so we moved your ass out." The Colonel only answered half of my question.

So why did he move me into his office?

"You caused me a lot of trouble, Zane. Now I have my hands full of paperwork because of your no-show at the Gym. High Command is beating my ass raw for an explanation. And that stupid Mister Lebreau called me up twice just to bitch you out. _Twice_." The Colonel grumbled.

"Fuck Chris." I spat. The Colonel sighed.

"I was just preparing the final statement. High Command wants to pull your ass out of the Corps, and force a medical discharge down your throat." The Colonel stood up, carrying a stack of papers in his hands.

"But I have the accounts of fifteen Rangers crediting you for saving their lives. Fifteen lives, or a televised Gym battle? Not even the coldest bureaucrat in High Command is going to contest the equity of that exchange." The Colonel dropped the stack of papers on my chest.

"Darwin isn't the only one receiving a medal for exceptional service. You did well, kid. You did damn well." The Colonel put a hand on my shoulder. I swallowed my rotting throat.

"Read that, then get some rest. The four units that you commandeered spoke quite highly of your leadership skills. And the three that you dragged from the dust practically wrote love letters for you. I can procure a box of tissues if you need them for mopping up the tears." The Colonel's mocking voice brought weak laughter out of my ragged lungs.

"Get some sleep, Zane. I'll wake you for the evening mess, just to see if you can tolerate solid food." Colonel Isaac Howes patted my arm firmly, then returned to his desk. Galapagos stood watch over me, like his intimidating presence was supposed to bring me some kind of comfort.

To the turtle's credit, he succeeded. The Fucking Bastard blinked out like a light, and slept the pain away.

…

"On your back again, Bastard?" I turned over from the Assyrian History book I was reviewing, and damn near jumped out of my skin.

"Captain Lewis!" I raised a hasty salute. The Captain's straight line of a mouth didn't even twitch. She completely ignored my salute.

"At ease, Warrant Officer." The Blackhat Scout sat down at my side.

"How are the lungs?" Captain Lewis asked.

"Don't ask." I replied in a grumble. Captain Lewis shook her head.

"You almost killed yourself. Again."

That drew a pause from me. I sighed through my nostrils, and looked away from the Captain.

"Yeah, well this time I got results." I wasn't smug at all when I said it. My voice was close to breaking. The guilt was far from gone.

 _My Echo…_

"Hey. Don't you be getting all long sighted on me. I don't have time to listen to you snivel. Blackhat Team Seven got called into Viridian for a torch and burn. The Venomoth are under control now. I just wanted to see if you had any intent on sticking with your mission." Captain Lewis informed me. I closed my book, and set it aside. Then I turned to the Captain and fixed her with my calm eyes.

"Chris moaned my Goddamn ear off when you ditched Pewter. I understand that you had a shitty plan for tackling the Gym too. Who are you trying to bluff, Bastard? There isn't a single thing that your dog can do to Brock's novice team. And Vauban squaring off against an Onix, with only status as a prayer? Brock would see that coming a klick away. It was a half-baked strategy, pulled out of your ass just to get Chris off your back. There's only one outcome for Trainers who challenge the Gyms as unrealistically as you intended to do. That outcome runs counter to your objective." Captain Lewis stated it all in that no-bullshit-tolerated voice of hers. I wasn't going to argue with her assertion.

Captain Lewis was completely right.

"Captain… I'll be straight with you. I don't want to be a Trainer. I don't want to play in the League. I'm a Ranger. I need to serve as a Ranger." I answered.

"So what does that mean? You don't think that your mission benefits the Corps?" Captain Lewis asked. I chewed on my tongue, but one thing kept bugging me. Well... Fuck it. I was gonna tell her. I'd let Captain Lewis decide if I was cut out for this chicken-shit outfit that High Command had put me in.

"Captain, I drove a kid away from the recruiter's office because I didn't want him to die. How does that coincide with my objective?" I asked. Captain Lewis just stared at me with those ice cold eyes. I didn't baulk beneath them. I met the Captain's ocular challenge with my sole eye. It was a while before the Captain answered me.

"If you thought that the kid was going to die, then I trust your Ranger's instinct. We're not the Military. We fight for the people, not just the politicians. You may not have made another Ranger for the uniform, but you saved a life, Zane. And that is the whole point of being a Ranger." Captain Lewis rose from her chair.

"I talked with your doctors. You're leaving Prime Outpost in two days. You're headed to Viridian. You'll take the shuttle to Pewter, and face Brock for the Boulder Badge. And you will have a real plan of engagement this time. Maybe you should listen to your stupid-ass PR Agent. Chris Lebreau is an idiot, but he knows his field better than anyone else. Beat Brock, make a splash, then it's off to Cerulean City with you. Pus for lungs or not, you're going to answer the call, Ranger." Captain Lewis made for the exit, while I was left to stare off into vacant space.

"You asked me if I still intended to stick with the mission. Doesn't that imply that I have a choice?" I asked, finding myself rather irritated with this Blackhat bitch. Captain Lewis stopped at the doorway to the Colonel's office.

"Of course you have a choice. Did you want me to approve the medical discharge?"

Oh, that was low.

"I'll be on that shuttle in two days." I growled. Captain Lewis left without another word. I gritted my teeth, before returning to a chapter devoted to prehistoric agriculture. My knuckles were white on the edges of my clenched book.

Captain Lewis.

"You fucking cunt…"

…

I left the Barracks a half an hour before the morning horn sounded. Shortly after Captain Lewis's arrival, I'd been kicked out of the Colonel's office, and made to rest my beaten ass with the rest of the Rangers. I wasn't the only one sleeping off a case of necrotoxin exposure. Most of the Infantry units were suffering too, some even worse than me. But the Blackhats had taken the burden off of our shoulders. After nearly two weeks of hunting and corralling the Venomoth by destroying their favorite nesting locations, the Rangers had driven them all into sector Charlie for a Torch and Burn. Forty thousand concentrated Venomoth versus the combined might of Blackhat Teams One, Two, Five, Seven, and Eight.

Venomoths: 0

Blackhats: 40,000

Statistics like that is why I want my Black Beret, and the Blackhats put my accrued credentials to absolute shame on a daily basis.

I have a long way to go before I can call that Brotherhood of Elites my own.

Despite this, I did get to meet some of the Blackhats. Some of them actually wanted to meet me. They didn't stick around in Viridian for too long. The Blackhats had other priority mon to kill. But some of the Blackhats that I talked to filled me with relief.

Not all the Blackhats are heartless wenches like Captain Lewis.

My first stop on leaving the Barracks was the Kennels. Cortez had fared better than me, but still…

You thought that Cortez was ugly before?

You should have seen him after De-Con.

The Rangers had shaved his fur to the roots, and dunked my dog in a chemical bath that made him swell up like a sting. After decontamination, the medics had plugged Cortez full of tubes and purged his system of the poisons, well before the effects started setting in.

The medics were a little surprised at Cortez's resilience, but given his past encounter with the Grimers…

-I think that Cortez could've licked himself clean, and his toxin familiar immunity system would have made him feel none the worse for it.

"Are you cold, pooch?" I asked Cortez as I unlocked his kennel. Cortez's naked body was wrapped in a tight fitting insulated sleeve, which wasn't doing much for him in the brisk May morning air.

Cortez left his kennel, shaking with a shiver. I was not letting my dog get sick from this bullshit. My coat was pulled off, and bundled tightly on that suffering dog. Cortez looked up at me when I pulled away. Despite the indignity of wearing my cumbersome coat, there was a hint of gratitude in those eyes of his.

"Come on, Cortez. Let's go get your little sister up." I sighed, clutching my arms against the chill. I headed off to the Trough with Cortez dragging coattails behind me.

I approached Vauban's Trough as casually as I could. I was just going to kick the foundation as usual, but Vauban's eyes snapped open before I could.

My little girl looked up at me with those watering eyes.

We hadn't seen each other in almost two weeks.

"Look at that. There's something of a Ranger in you yet." I chuckled. Vauban bounded out of the dirt, and rushed over to me and Cortez.

Out of everyone who partook in the sector Delta rescue effort, Vauban had fared the best. The Venomoths' psionics had disorientated her something fierce, but Vauban had fought that off in the first day. She wasn't even affected by the Venomoths' dust. Vauban actually soaked that shit up, and now she had a bulb full of necrotoxin enhanced nasty.

I was hoping that Vauban's cellular metabolism didn't figure out how to replicate the protein structures in the Venomoth's enzymes, but knowing Waterloo's genetic buttfuckery…

That shit was probably irrevocably encoded into Vauban's Saboteur arsenal now.

"Easy, Vauban. Remember where we are." I whispered a warning instead of beating her senseless. Vauban was making face-love to my shins.

She settled down appropriately, but Vauban couldn't hide that hopeful look in her red eyes.

"If it makes you feel any better, I missed you too. Now come on. We've got one more stop to make before the morning horn." I nudged Vauban with a toe, then turned around and headed for the Aquatic Range with my dog and dinosaur in my shadow.

"Well, well…" I smirked at the huge red face on the other side of the Tank.

"If you don't look like the best seven-thousand-and-eight-hundred Sandz that I have ever spent…" I couldn't finish. My hacking laughter prevented me from continuing.

Darwin looked miserable.

The Ranger medics had stripped half of the scales off my fish, and lined his mouth and gills in carbon-soak pads.

The rope that I had cast to Darwin in sector Delta wasn't exactly clean.

Nor was my unconscious hazmat clad body.

You see, Darwin didn't drag my ass downstream.

-That fucking Magikarp _ferried_ me _._

"A world first… I have succeeded where no man has succeeded before me. I have successfully ridden a Magikarp through water... and not drowned." I chuckled as I leaned my back up against the glass, and slid down the smooth surface to my haunches.

"Damnit, Darwin… I thought that you were useless. But sometimes…" I looked over my shoulder to the stupid fish.

"-Sometimes I like being wrong." I gave the guileless son-of-a-bitch a smirk, then waved Cortez over.

Reaching for a pin on my coat pocket, I unclasped the Crossed Arms. I chewed on my lips when I looked at that medal.

The Crossed Arms were only awarded to Rangers who went above and beyond the call to rescue their comrades from certain death, at great cost to their own person. Most recipients of the Crossed Arms received their meritorious decoration at burial. Only an act of self-sacrifice could earn you the Crossed Arms.

Regardless of whether it killed you, or not.

"See that, Darwin?" I asked, flashing him the medal. The fish just stared on, seemingly oblivious. I knew better. Even if Darwin couldn't make facial expressions, just him being near the glass was proof enough of his interest.

"That's mine. Thanks for letting me appreciate it." I put the Crossed Arms back on my coat, and fished out my Tact. Pad from the breast pocket. I logged on, then pulled up my mon's certification files and records. Tapping on Darwin's icon, I highlighted the lower left corner of his dispatch, and then clicked 'expand.'

"-And that one is yours." I said, tilting the Tact. Pad over towards Darwin.

On the display, rendered in three-dimension format, was the Ranger's Ray and Star.

A medal awarded to Rangers who displayed exemplary service in times of distress, going well beyond expected normal service.

The Colonel was not joking around.

Darwin had earned his decoration.

My oversized Magikarp didn't react at all. If he cared, Darwin couldn't show it. But that stupid fish had made history.

Darwin was the first Magikarp ever recorded to receive a medal for service.

The previous record setting accolade for Magikarpkind was a celebrity critic's review of Magikarp Soy Aioli and Wasabi Pilaf.

"Well done, Darwin. Well done." I gave him a salute, regardless of the fact that he couldn't return it. But the sentiment was well received. Darwin bumped up against the glass at my back, displaying a curious little affection.

"Darwin, you keep that shit up, and I'll beat you just like I beat Vauban." I meant to make it a warning, but my cold demeanor snapped on sight of that fish's fucked up mouth. I couldn't stop laughing.

The morning horn sounded, and I rose to my feet. All three of my mon were watching me expectantly.

"Darwin, I'm waiting on a blood sample from you. If you come up all clear, then we'll take those pads out of your face, and get you ready to go. Vauban, Cortez-" I turned from my fish to my two quadrupeds.

"-We're heading out today. With or without Darwin. If necessary, Command will send him back to us once he's fully recovered. We're taking the L-straight south to Viridian City, and from there we'll be heading north to Pewter by way of shuttle. Now I need to think of something for the Gym, so if I get pissy on the way, it's because I don't want to deal with this League bullshit. Just giving you two the heads up. I'm probably going to be bitching for most of the trek." I grunted. Neither Vauban or Cortez seemed to shaken by my admission. The Vets were leaving the Barracks, bullying the Walkouts into the morning routine. Viridian Forest was still closed off to civilian traffic, and the Rangers were hustling to mop up the last of the Venomoth. If we could shut them down early into the season, then the Rangers could regroup and prepare for the Stantler and Ursaring season ahead of schedule.

There's no rest for the hands and eyes beneath a Ranger's beret. We are always engaged. We are always unsupported.

But we're not always alone.

I took my coat back from Cortez, and dismissed both him and Vauban to their Pokeballs. I had an hour to dine, before my presence was expected in the Colonel's office for loadout, debriefing, and redeployment.

The mission would resume.

For better or for worse.

…

"Here's your less than standard field kit, Warrant Officer. None of the fun stuff, plenty of the Trainer's trappings." The Colonel indicated my pack on his desk. I shouldered it without a word. Colonel Isaac Howes pulled a Radio from the outerwear tech, and handed it to me.

"One standard long range Ranger Radio. This one is not locked out of nonpriority hails. But you are to check in with local Command and request permission before you even think about assisting Rangers in the future. At some point, Zane, your mission is going to take priority over your standard duties as a Ranger. You will be expected to attend press conferences while your fellow Rangers die in the field. I'm not happy about it, you're not happy about it, but that is High Command's own phrasing. Do not throw eggs at my face again. If those Rangers had died, Zane-"

"-Sir, I would have died with them." I dared to interrupt my Colonel, and his fist hammering down on the desk reminded me that there were limits.

"We're trying to keep your ass alive, boy… Do not go killing yourself for a lesser cause. Trust me, Zane… We need your example out in the private sector. You know as well as I do what is going to happen if you fail in the League." The Colonel growled. I swallowed.

"The draft-?"

"Of course the fucking draft, you idiot! We are running out of men, and all we're going to get from the draft is bunch of belligerent mon-humping pussies who are going to fill more graves than they'll cull mon! The politicians, High Command, me, and you… None of us want that to happen. You can keep that from happening, Bastard. You can save countless lives. And you're going to throw that all away because you are too hung-up on being the Fucking Bastard. Shape up, boy, and do the right thing." The Colonel was pissed. I could feel my face warming.

Maybe he had a point.

The Colonel breathed heavily out of his nose, and then lifted a sheet from the desk.

"Darwin's medical examination came in about half an hour ago. They're pulling the pads out now. He's through the worst of it, and now all the doctors can recommend for Darwin is rest. He needs time out of the Pokeball to heal, so whenever you pitch camp near water, his ass is swimming. The doctors also recommend that Darwin avoids strenuous activities until his scales grow back. Your fish is currently listed unfit for combat, but he always was. You are to retrieve Darwin from the Tank when we are finished here. Next item-"

The Colonel rolled through the manifest, highlighting the important bits, and skipping through the formalities. It took him all of fifteen minutes to finish debriefing me, and setting me up for the long haul.

"One thing I need to tell you before you leave, Bastard." The Colonel released me from my salute, but did not immediately dismiss me.

"You are not heading to Viridian alone. I assigned you an escort for the L-straight. Just in case your doctors are wrong about your lungs." The Colonel looked to me for a reaction.

All I had was a question.

"An escort?" I asked, eyebrow quirked. The Colonel snorted.

"Somebody you haven't seen in a while. I recommend popping any painkillers you have now, before you rendezvous with your escort past Prime Outpost's south checkpoint. Just head down the L-straight. You'll know who it is when you see them." The Colonel had a slight smirk rising on one corner of his mouth.

"Painkillers? What? Are they gonna chatter my ears off?" I asked, concerned. The Colonel started laughing.

"Not exactly…"

...

"You Bastard." Trish sounded livid. I straightened my neck out, the sting on my face hinted at a rising welt.

"-Something I did?" I asked Trish with a smile.

The other cheek received the backhand.

"Something you didn't." Trish hissed.

I won't lie. That second blow put me on my ass.

"-What didn't I do?" I pushed myself off of the ground, expecting the enraged Second-Lieutenant to kick me back down.

Trish surprised me.

She used her fist to floor me instead of her foot.

"You left Prime Outpost damn near a month ago." Trish grabbed my right arm, and dragged me to my feet.

Goddamn, this woman was _strong_.

"-And?" I asked pleasantly.

A knee to my crotch preceded Trish's answer.

"-You never stopped by to tell me goodbye." Trish said coldly.

Oh.

"Whoops?" I tried, gasping from my curl. Trish made to punch me again, but paused halfway through the wind up. She seemed to think better of it.

Then Trish kicked my shins in.

"Do you mind? I'm already having difficulty walking!" I roared from the ground. That last strike had put me on my side in the dirt. Trish grabbed my uniform by the collar, and hoisted me into the air.

"I mean, shit doll, I missed you too?" I tried again, staving off the headbutt that Trish had been preparing for me with the proper reply. She dropped me on my unsteady feet.

"Oh, you better hope that you die before I make Captain, bitch…" I grumbled, reeling from the beating. Trish just smirked at me.

"Why? So you can pinch me for a squeal?" Trish asked, her voice mocking.

"I figured you were getting off on this." I hissed through clenched teeth. Trish started laughing.

"I missed you, Bastard." Trish simpered wickedly.

"I could tell." I grumbled. Trish dusted my back off, and straightened the shoulders of my uniform out.

"Well buck up, Zane. We have a half of a day's walk ahead of us." Trish turned on a heel, and made her way towards the south.

"We?" I asked, the connotation dawning on me just as I spoke that lonely word outloud.

"Well, the Colonel requested an escort for the Bastard, seeing as we're all still very concerned about his health…" Trish grinned something nasty over her shoulder to me. I was slightly startled by this announcement, even though my brain had already realized the situation before Trish's admission.

"What about Firewatch-?"

"I volunteered." Trish's grin widened.

It might sound awkward, but there was something about this one-eyed woman's evil smile that forced hormone-enriched blood into my genitalia.

"Volunteered to be my escort?" I smiled teasingly at Trish. Her grin disappeared instantly.

"An 'escort,' not an _escort._ "

Damn. I knew that it was too good to be true.

"Oh well. Guess we have to keep it professional then." I grunted, beating off the heat.

"-Well… Casual." Trish amended.

Score.

"-But not in the way that you're thinking."

Fuck.

"Come on, Zane. The day's a wasting." Trish headed off further down the road, and a very compromised Bastard was left to follow.

…

"I still can't believe that you headed off to Pewter City without saying goodbye." Trish grumbled over her Grambar. I was almost finished with mine.

"Well, the Colonel outfitted me himself, and then marched my ass right out of Prime Outpost, so I'm really not to blame." I replied with a chortle. Trish snorted.

"Like you would have visited me even if he hadn't." Trish replied. I sighed.

"In the Shed? Hell no. In your personal quarters? Hell yes." I gave Trish my charming smile.

One-eyed Veteran Ranger or not, that smile completely disarmed her.

"That was a one time deal, Zane. Neither of us knew if we were going to see the next sunrise…" Trish was actually turning red, a nervous grin twitching at her lips.

"And what a sunrise it was…" My voice was just as soft as that smile, earning me a very un-Vet like giggle from Trish.

"Behave, Bastard." Trish ordered. I cut the pillow talk.

"...If Command found out about that-"

"I'm sure that most of Command have been in a foxhole before with a sexy Senior Officer." I smirked at Trish. She began to knead her single eye with a fist.

"You're incorrigible, Zane." Trish groaned.

"Well... Doug knew, and all he did was laugh about it." I snorted. Trish cleared her throat.

"Doug... Zane, I'll be honest. I didn't volunteer to serve as your escort for pleasant chatter. I did so on behalf of an old friend of ours…" Trish swallowed, and I stopped walking.

"The Cap?" I asked, voice soft. Trish worked her mouth.

"Captain Douglass Fitzgerald had… He had high hopes for you, Zane. It's why he took you under his wing. Other than the Colonel himself, no other Ranger stationed in Viridian had served as long as Doug had. He recognised your potential before anyone else did." Trish shuddered slightly.

"You miss him too?" I asked, my voice low. Trish straightened herself out.

"...Doug was my Commanding Officer for eight years. I knew him long before you ever joined up with our little unit. He and I served together throughout the bad and the worst. Captain Fitzgerald saved my life more times than you can count. Of course I miss him, but my purpose for digging up his ghost isn't to share our grief. He left something for you. Two somethings, actually." Trish stated calmly.

I forced the rising lump in my throat down. Trish reached for her knife, and unclasped the sheath from her shoulder.

"As you probably remember, Doug was a bit of a blacksmithing enthusiast. He was rather fond of forging knives." Trish murmured as she handed me the sheath. I took the weapon by the hilt, and released it from its protective cover.

A fine blade, styled after the BAMFs, but with an even broader head, and a wicked curve at its tip, revealed itself to me.

"It's three inches longer than the standard kit, yet two ounces lighter. And a whole hell of a lot more durable." Trish began.

"Why is it red?" I asked, turning the crimson blade over in the sunlight. That wasn't an enamel finish. The red coloration had a natural metallic luster.

"It was forged from the blade-feathers of a Skarmory, and the hilt was carved out of a Cloyster's shell spine." Trish smiled at the look of wonderment on my face.

"How the hell-"

"A Magmortar provided the heat necessary to soften the steel, and a diamond cutter was used to fashion the hilt. The grip is tanned Miltank udder hide, so it's just as tough and reliable as the rest of the blade. Unlike your G.I. BAMF, this knife will not be damaged cutting open a Venomoth. Nor will it have much trouble piercing the hide of a Golem." Trish explained. I coughed in shock.

"-This is too much knife…" I whispered. Trish just laughed.

"Doug spared no expense on it. It is every bit the exquisite masterpiece as it is a refined killing instrument. Doug wanted you to have it when you made Chief Warrant Officer. He thought that it would see you safely to Lieutenant-Captain. But seeing as you were promoted on the same day that you disappeared-"

"-The Colonel never gave me a chance- Come on, Trish! Do you really think that I'd-?"

"-Yet as incredible and valuable as that gift is… Doug's second gift puts it to absolute shame." Trish shut me up with that line. I couldn't even speak. How could Doug's second gift be anything more overwhelming?

Trish reached for her belt, and pulled something small from it. She took my right wrist, and turned my hand upwards. Then Trish pressed something cold and spherical into my palm.

"-Doug… Left something in his will, in regards to you. Something that he knew you would appreciate just as much as he did. Though it's technically General Issue, Doug was the only Ranger that could tame him. Doug taught you how to command him under careful supervision, and I would assume that Doug talked it out with him before he added that line to the will. So I imagine that you have his approval as well." Trish's hand hadn't left my palm. My fingers had yet to close around it.

"-Trish… I can't-"

" _Take good care of him, Bastard._ Those were the exact words in Doug's will. The Colonel knew well enough who 'him' referred to. Doug saw how you and Vauban got along with one another… I think that Doug wanted him to have a good home should the Captain ever…" Trish pursed her lips.

"-But Trish… This is Doug's trophy… This is his Darwin…" I was choking up. Tears were streaming down my cheeks.

I knew that the Cap had liked me.

But I had no idea that Doug-

"Doug's trophy is every bit as valuable as your Darwin, and every bit as rare. Rare enough to garner the attention of less honorable men. _So_ _take good care of him._ He is ancient, Zane. Old and crotchety." Trish leaned in to whisper the next line.

"And unlike humans… _His species_ grows stronger with age."

"But-"

"Doug wanted you to have him. Specifically, when you were ready. Both Colonel Isaac Howes and myself believe that the time has come. I already signed over the dispatch. High Command has cleared you for deploying a dual-roled Bastion and Siege Class. _Damascus_ is now your responsibility, Zane."

Trish finally uncovered her hand from mine, and rested both of her palms below my numb digits. I stared down at the silver and white Pokeball in my palm. Its cosmetic distinctions served far more in favor of functionality than aesthetics. A ring of blue beads were fixed into the Pokeball's bulky silver crown. Those beads were the protective casings that housed the extra micro-computers. The extra computing power was required to translate the sheer amount of matter contained within the Pokeball into storable energy, and record the surplus of physiological data that safely reshaped the occupant from the induced molecular compression and dematerialization.

An Ultra-Mass Pokeball.

AKA a 'Heavy Ball.'

"Trish…"

"Damascus probably won't take to your Command quite so readily. He's been around since the Brink Collapse, so Damascus… Has his senior moments. Well, that and his violent moments, but if you can get him to obey you…"

"-Brock won't stand a chance." My hand clenched on the Heavy Ball. Trish smirked at me and leaned back.

"Doug caught Damascus twenty-five years ago on a Safari deep into Johto's Mount Silver. Doug and his team had been called in to eliminate a rampant Delta-Four. You might know the story. Doug was the only member of his unit to return home alive. They were prepared for a lethal engagement with a Delta-Four, but they weren't quite ready for dealing with Damascus. Doug captured him purely out of spite. Doug wanted the mon that killed his Squad to suffer the indignities of being trained by a Ranger. With that kind of naked intent, I don't think that either Damascus or Doug anticipated a sense of comradery forming between the two of them. Keep that comradery alive, Zane. And when next you encounter a Snorlax… Well, with your clever head and Damascus's insane power, you might actually have a fighting chance." Trish cupped my clenched hand in both of hers.

"Doug taught you how to control him. Damascus obeyed you in practice sessions. We hope that Damascus hasn't forgotten Doug's star pupil. Otherwise, Zane… I might have just killed you by giving you this pokeball." Trish sounded nervous. I let my breath out in a shaking wind.

"High Command approved me _for this_?" I asked in disbelief. Trish shook her head.

"Both myself, Colonel Howes, and Doug's testament vouched for you. And I suspect that your PR Agent's bitch fit regarding your competition preparations had something to do with High Command's decision too. You were really going to challenge a Gym Leader to an unrestricted match, with only one mon even capable of scratching his minor league team? Come on, Zane. Take your mission a little more seriously. Believe it or not, all the Vets are still rooting for you." Trish actually sounded angry with me. I swallowed again. That was news to me. I had expected ridicule from the Vets. Not their support.

"You have an important mission, Zane. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that the outcome of your endeavor will affect the Ranger Corps for years to come. You could save both us, and the politicians from declaring a draft. We need willing soldiers, not conscripted hippies. The Rangers are failing, Zane. And if we fall…"

"-Then the rest of humanity follows." I finished Trish's dark warning for her, decisively adding the fourth member of my Squad to mine own belt. The weight of these words were not lost on me. I felt just as old as the Colonel. I understood the responsibility that I had been entrusted with. This was my duty. I had to buck up, and do what was required of me.

And I had to do it with dignity.

I met Trish's lonely eye with my only eye. I don't know what it was, but there must have been something written on my face that made Trish chew on her lips.

Trish took a quick look further down either end of the L-straight. The road north and south of us was barren. Civilian traffic was currently delayed, and the Rangers were either fighting Venomoth out in the Frontier, or guarding the checkpoints. We were all alone on this stretch of forested road. One hoarse breath from Trish's was all the warning that she gave me. Trish's lips crushed mine in a dominating kiss, and those powerful arms of hers dragged my ass off into the brush for a proper goodbye.

Now I may kiss…

-But I sure as hell don't tell.

…

Trish and I made Viridian City in good time. We might have both been breathless, and in far better moods than we had left Prime Outpost in…

But we made it in one piece.

-That said, we had some pretty close calls.

My SO bandana was wrapped around my neck, covering up some of the bleeding bite marks that I had accrued along the way.

I said it before, and I'll say it again.

Vets with eye patches are fucking kinky. And Trish had given me another fond memory to keep me smiling at night.

"Well, this is where we part." Trish extended a hand to me. I shook it firmly.

"If ever you come back around these parts, stop by and say hello to me and the Colonel." Trish pulled me into a clandestine embrace.

"-And if you don't, I'll emasculate you." Trish hissed in my ear. I snorted, and gave her a firm pat on the back.

"You'd miss it more than I would, and you know it." I grinned, releasing her. Trish took a jab at my ribs, getting one final chuckle out of the both of us.

"Good luck, Zane. Make us proud." Trish lifted a Pokeball, and her Rapidash appeared. Mounting her flaming stead, Trish took off without another word, heading north, back to Prime Outpost.

Back to our home.

"Firewatch, crack the gate. Any rioters I need to be aware of?" I asked the checkpoint guard.

"No, sir. That blew over like two weeks ago. You have a clear shot straight to Viridian City's north gate. Do be aware though, the Rattata are very active right now. We recommend that you travel the Route with a deterrent deployed." I patted my new knife, and reached for my new Pokeball.

Oh, I was gonna show them some deterrence, and I'd clean up that Rattata problem while I was at it. Just you-

" _...Otherwise, Zane… I might have just killed you by giving you this pokeball."_

-On second thought, let's not do that quite yet.

"Vauban, report." I selected my little girl for deterrence detail. Any Rattata that made to engage me and my own was going to get a little taste of that Venomoth toxin.

"Command has cleared you for admittance. You are free to proceed, Warrant Officer." The Firewatch unit gave me a salute, and I returned it.

Then me and my little girl headed out on our uneventful way to Viridian City.

Now I would have expected trouble on the L-straight or the Route between the Reserve and Viridian City.

I wasn't expecting trouble within the walls of Viridian City itself.

Yep.

That was where I first met the Prophet.

And if you thought that the Snorlax had fucked me up…

-That fat fuck was absolutely nothing compared to TH.

Oh.

My.

God.

…

I dismissed Vauban as soon as I passed under the city gates. Call it a Ranger Courtesy, but a lot of people feel nervous seeing a Ranger alongside their mon in a city.

It's pretty much considered the same thing as walking through the downtown region with a full-auto assault rifle strapped to your back.

Now I may be a jackass that gets off on other people's discomfort, but Trish left me in a _good_ mood, so I was feeling cordial.

I bought a quick bite to eat from a street vendor, and chased it down with a cold ale. After a busy day of strenuous physical activity, nothing hit the proverbial spot quite like Viridian's grilled sweetmeats and tubers on a stick. It was both cheaper and a damn sight better tasting than the shit they served on the shuttle. I'd taken the shuttle system back when I lived in Celadon, and let me tell you-

-There are actually MREs that will make you less sick than shuttle food.

…

Kanto's shuttle system was a relatively new concept in the region. It was a subterranean electric tram system that aimed to connect all of the settlements together in a seamless transit.

It didn't quite work.

Between the expensive production, maintenance, and operating costs, only the wealthiest of the settlements could afford to construct the tunnels, track, and train required to put a shuttle lane down.

Then of course, the Diglets and Dugtrios tore the tunnels apart constantly with their incessant prospecting. Meaning even more money had to go into repairs.

The end result was a ticket price far too high for casual commuting.

Only the wealthy could afford to use the shuttle on a daily basis, and everyone else only used it for vacation plans.

Which meant that the laws of supply and demand only made the tickets even more expensive.

Don't get me wrong. I think that the shuttle system is a great idea, and the people who thought of it and laid it out were geniuses as well as humanitarians.

But the capitalist bastards that funded the effort wanted to profit.

Fuck the wellbeing of humanity, let's put a price tag on it.

The shuttle system was the closest thing humanity had to a secure public commute. I had hopes that one day, the shuttle system would make the risky Routes redundant. But that wasn't going to happen while greedy fucks managed the track.

They did everything they could to generate a profit. They even made half-ass repairs and slipshod patch-ups just to save on the maintenance costs.

And then people died because of it.

One 'unfortunate' accident decreased the human population by over five-hundred souls.

There were lawsuits of course, and a coalition of Rail Inspectors was founded to perform routine safety code checks. And the Rail Inspector's Coalition may or may not have been bought off by the shuttle system's financial offices.

Why am I suspicious?

Because the wrecks just kept on happening.

Greed is such a funny thing.

The Kantonese shuttle system was designed with the purest intent. It was going to save human lives, and grant the population a convenience that had been lost since the Pre-Brink era.

But Corporate douchebags fucked it up, just for personal gain.

Worse, they took something inherently honest, and then made it dangerous.

Just another classic case of, 'The wants of the few outweigh the needs of the many,' to be forgotten by the history books.

For all our evolution these past fifteen-hundred years…

-Humanity still has a long way to go.

…

I made my way to Viridian's shuttle terminal. Viridian is a pretty big city. Lots of money passes through this City, as the wealth makes its way to both the Indigo Plateau, and the crossroads to Johto. Viridian doesn't really have a rich history like Pewter. Viridian City has always just been here. It sprang up back when Indigo became the official seat of the Kantonese Government, roughly five-hundred years ago. And beyond the typical catastrophes that plague humanity in the Post-Brink era, nothing really interesting happened to Viridian City in those five-hundred years. Viridian City was just a prime location for setting up a humble money-net on the only safe junction through the Argent Mountain range that separates the Johto and Kanto regions. And that captured money stayed in town, meaning that the average shop owner's gross income could afford even more comfort than the equivalent business located in commercial Celadon. It was a quaint place to live, possessing all the charm of a village hamlet, and offering all the trappings of the big cities.

No wonder why Viridian City is considered the best city in Kanto to spend your retirement in.

Yep, it's that boring.

...

Viridian never really was a place of hustle and bustle, like Saffron or Celedon, but there's always been something cooking quietly behind Viridian's peaceful scene.

Back in the early days, it was Route construction. Viridian pioneered the Route system with Pewter centuries before the rest of Kanto caught on to the concept.

Right now? The simmering kettle was Team Rocket.

But who cares about those losers?

I know biker gangs in Celedon that can make Team Rocket look like poseurs. If you pissed off one of the Blue Smogs, then the entire gang would gank you and your whole family's asses without blinking, no matter what you offered in reparations.

If you pissed off one of Team Rocket's members, then all it took was a greased palm to save your skin.

Everyone of them was just a white-collared crook with a stupid looking uniform, strutting around Viridian City's alleyways with their pants pulled below their ass cheeks, posturing like hardcore gangsters.

Thank God for them, their black berets are ridiculously chunky and oversized.

Otherwise, they might piss off the classy Ranger Blackhats, and then old Team Rocket would learn a thing or two about real 'terrorist activities.'

Other than Team Rocket though, Viridian was pretty sleepy. Even Viridian City's Gym Leader, Giovanni Delimonto, a businessman and League Quad-Flame, was decidedly underspoken.

His Gym was so rarely opened to challengers, that the League was threatening to revoke his title.

And the League had been whingeing about it for years.

To his credit though, Giovanni ran a tight ship.

He was a Goddamn Quad-Flame Championship Trainer. Giovanni could've served on the Elite Four just by tapping on the right top corner of his Trainer's License-

-Hell, he could have challenged Lance for the Throne, but Giovanni humbly settled for the position of Gym Leader.

He only accepted Championship and Premiership challenges. No Novice, Intermediate, or Major ranked battles were allowed in Giovanni's ring.

And Giovanni would only grant you the Earth Badge if you could topple his Championship team in unrestricted format.

Which, being the same team that had earned Giovanni the fourth flame on his Trainer's Licence, meant that you were as good as challenging a member of the Elite Four for a fucking Gym Badge.

So as you can imagine, there weren't many Trainers who wanted to face off against the Terra King. It was easier to purchase a passport, head over to Johto, and win a substitute Gym Badge from one the pussy-wingers native there.

Of course, if you took the easy way out, and had your eyes fixed on Indigo's Throne…

-You were missing out on an early taste of what to expect from the Elite Four, and the chance to discover if you had what it took to run with the best of the best.

I viewed the experience that Giovanni offered as an invaluable service to the Trainer community, and I was one of the few who saw it that way.

Old Giovanni kept a firm grip on his Gym Leader title with a rarely opened Gym, just because the annual competition paperwork that he submitted to the League proved the statistical lack of Trainers endowed with a spine.

That, and in the Seasonal Finals, Giovanni always proved that he had earned his Quad-Flame by wiping out all four members of the Elite Four.

I can respect a hard-ass like that.

Especially one who's so discreet about it.

…

Getting my ticket from the shuttle office was a cinch. I just walked over to the Season Pass line, elbowed every grey haired, briefcase wielding suit out of my way, and flashed my Ranger's Badge at the clerk. After she scanned my Service Tag, I was free to enter the terminal.

I hate terminals.

You can well imagine why.

I'm underground, being blinded by harsh fluorescent lights, in a cramped cement cell reminiscent of a bunker; save for the nonstop bukkake of loud, flashy, neon adverts, and I'm surrounded by-

-Fucking Civis.

I could barely breath in that noisy hole. There were so many people in the terminal, that it didn't matter how many I shoved outta my way.

There would always be another five who would sporadically appear to replace just one of the defeated, and my poor elbows were getting bruised from hitting all of those ribcages.

I pretty much moshed my way over to a bench, and then relocated the pudgy fucker occupying it by flinging his nachos on the ground.

One look in my stone-cold pissed-off eyes cut his "What the Fu-" just short of the obscenity's final consonants.

I suppose that being a Ranger in uniform with a pair of knives strapped to either collar and a big ol' medal dangling off my right breast coat pocket helped too.

Get out of my seat, you fat Civi.

My fucked up legs are killing me.

I sat down on my legally commandeered bench, freeing up another two spots just by losing the fat fuck, and they were instantly filled with two hairy beatniks who had forgotten to shower this week.

Fuck this.

I'd rather suffer on my feet than smell the body odor and incinerated narcotics that these two reeked of.

I stood up, grinding the toes off of one of the hippies with my heel as I did so, and I started shouldering off for want of higher ground.

 _I fucking hate terminals._

That's when I noticed a clearing. I did a double take when I saw it. It was so obviously out of place that it seemed profane. There was a good ten-meter circumference of unoccupied space, complete with a row of empty benches, looking mighty cozy up against the terminal walls; just beyond the human sea.

Naturally, I was suspicious.

I couldn't see any police tape sectioning the location off, and one vantage point afforded me a good look at the oasis.

Nope, no sewage on the floor. Just ten meters by ten meters of perfectly good, wholesome and desirable, damn near sexy breathing room.

So why the hell hadn't the crowd moved in to spoil it?

Another vantage point offered me a bit more intel.

The empty space wasn't completely empty.

There was one dark figure sitting smack dab in the middle of it, slouching on a bench with folded arms and a cap pulled down over his eyes.

I could sympathize with this poor fuck's want of solitude, but then his location struck me as eerie.

He was sitting directly in the middle of that open space.

And the wall of tourists had formed a perfect half circle around it.

...Something just didn't feel quite right about that...

I couldn't fathom why every other square meter of the terminal was drowned in human bodies, but this one lonely figure had himself a good ten-meter radius that nobody else would occupy. He was young, my age, older or younger I couldn't tell. Half of his face was covered by the tilted visor of his hat, making it impossible to accurately discern his features or his age. His clothes were exclusively black, save for a monochrome plaid pattern on his skinny pants. His high-collared coat was quilted and thinly insulated, which was odd, given the warmth of this May afternoon. His black cadet hat was crowned by an expensive pair of gray wide framed shades. Everything about his getup reeked of designer winter fashion, and only served to separate him further from the colorfully short sleeve garbed, khaki short clad, and flip-flop shod casual attire worn by the rest of the crowd.

Now, I'm not exactly a people person myself, but there was something peculiar about this guy's presence. As if he wasn't even really there. Every time my eyes wandered away from him, I found myself double taking to make sure that he hadn't just disappeared.

And I wasn't the only one eying him nervously.

As curiosity drew me closer to him, I noticed a gradually declining shift in the amount and volume of civilian chatter. Everybody was trying to ignore him, but nervous eyes kept flicking over shoulders towards his conspicuous person. When I reached the outer perimeter of this stranger's visible space bubble, I witnessed a civilian stray just a little further than me towards the guy.

I watched as this civilian turned sickly white. I watched as wide eyes grew hollow and dead. I watched as rivulets of sweat trickled down the civilian's brow. I watched the civilian struggle for breath as though in panic.

And then I watched as this civilian turned tail and ran.

I looked back at the stranger, completely bewildered. I still couldn't see his face. The brim of his hat was pulled down to his nose, suggesting that he was sleeping in this noisy terminal. I took another step forward, and immediately froze stiff.

 _Oh…_

Oh-

-Shit.

Holy fuck.

The revelation divining this guy's inexplicable solitude struck me with the full force of its supernatural presence. My joints began to ache, creaking like wood even when my limbs were still. Goosebumps rose all along my frame as a clammy chill overcame me. A sudden fever pushed bullets of sweat from my pores, conflicting repulsively with the bone-deep cold. A bizarre sensation seized my chest and throat, and I found myself struggling to breath normally, as though a fear of drowning plagued me in the dry air. And above it all, was an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy and dread, a primal terror compounded by an unnatural emotional depression.

I had just placed my right foot into a Distortion seep. A deep one.

This guy was haunted, by some really heavy shit. My educational exposure to a Ghost's presence in the academy was nothing compared to this. I felt a full fledged haunting, ten meters away from its source. I couldn't peg one spirit responsible for this kind of anomaly. Likely meaning multiple hauntings.

Powerful hauntings.

What the hell was this guy?

He wasn't sleeping. I saw a smile lift the corners of his mouth, as if he was privy to my stunned cognitive functions. Wait…

No.

Not a smile.

A smirk.

Cold. Sinister.

Mocking.

I swallowed hard. I had previously been more than happy to flee his presence, right up until I saw that smirk.

 _I'm_ a smug bastard.

There was no way in hell that I'd let this freak one up me without even trying to counter his creepy shit. I took another step forward-

-And felt a whisper of tattered cloth slither across my right shoulder and neck.

...Followed by something painfully cold and tantalizingly sharp pressing up against my throat.

"Pariah, withdraw." The stranger spoke in a breathy rasp, waving his hand in a contemptuous gesture. The invisible blade fell away from my throat, and the serpentine cloth drew a shudder from my person as it slid away. I found myself breathing again, wind drawn in sudden shaking intakes. I was hyperventilating.

My eyes were fixed on the stranger, watching as he rose into a straighter posture from his slouch on the bench. He reached for the brim of his hat, and began to lift it into the proper position. Every one of his motions was heavy and deliberately slow. Every one of his weighty gestures were measured to completion in the lapse between heartbeats, not by the seconds of time ticking by. There was something ethereal about his movements, as if he wasn't actually making them. It almost seemed as if he were some kind of graceful puppet.

The hat was adjusted, and the pale face of the closed-eyed stranger was revealed to me. Pouting lips curved into a knowing half smile, as a silent chuckle shook his frame. A small mole rested on the arch of his shallow left cheek, right below his shadowed eye socket. A sculpted nose and jaw were carved from alabaster in delicate finesse. Raven black hair was trimmed short and evenly draped down either side of his face in subtle sideburns. A smooth brow ascended to a straight hairline, marred only by the blue veins visible beneath the waxy skin.

And then he opened his sleep deprived eyes.

Grey. Cloudy grey.

Pupiless.

The irises we expansive, almost blotting out the whites of the scleras.

And I was staring right into those hellish eyes.

He wasn't blind. He was looking right at me. Those weren't contact lens.

Contact lens didn't make the walls bleed.

It began slowly. Almost unnoticeable at first. Then the entire world started rotting around the stranger. Thick blood welled from the festering pits collapsing the walls and floor. Shadows moved across the ground like smoke beneath glass, phantom fingers reaching out from the void for me. The lights dimmed, and disembodied voices began to whisper and weep. Everything else grew silent, and everything around me grew distant. I couldn't move. I was alone. Imprisoned in this fledgling hell with the stranger. He was decaying before my eyes, his inky bile leaking into the shadows like oozing tar. I couldn't move. I couldn't look away. The stranger was nothing more than a pitch soaked skeleton, necrotic flesh peeling away from his limbs in diseased curls, teeth chattering with an agonized and inhuman moan. Yet those grey eyes remained vivid and untouched, holding me captive in this unreality. The smell… Oh my God, the smell... All the world around us was dying, and the stranger was the cancer at its core, killing the world with his presence alone. I couldn't move. I couldn't scream. The shadows crept closer, rising from the ground and forming into monstrous shapes as they approached me. The living shadows were dripping from the wasting stranger, their figures growing stronger and more defined, as his moribund moan grew frail and weak. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe.

Then I blinked, and the illusion was dispelled.

I was in a typically well lit and busy Viridian terminal, not isolated in an outer layer of the Distortion.

This realization comforted me, bading air into my paralyzed lungs.

Then I keeled over, and vomited on the terminal floor.

"Well… Can't say that I'm surprised..." The stranger spoke in a soft whisper, his tired voice almost musical with a foreign accent. I looked up from the sick, and avoided making contact with those cursed eyes of his.

"Most people know better than to provoke the spirits, Ranger…" The stranger chuckled. I aligned my beret, face poised with cold dignity. Then I rose and held myself proudly.

As if I hadn't just emptied the contents of my stomach on the floor tiles five seconds ago.

I wasn't going to inquire about his eyes.

I didn't want to know where he got _those fucked up things_ from.

"A Ghost Trainer. Let me see your License." I growled. The stranger closed his unnatural eyes and chuckled noiselessly, before procuring a narrow black leather bound notebook from his breast pocket.

"I'm afraid that my status as a diplomat grants me total immunity to your authority, Ranger." The stranger opened the notepad and revealed an official dossier.

"This is my… Waiver of Immunity, as I'm sure that you are required to request proof of such documentation." The stranger offered the notepad, daring me to cross further into his slice of Hell with a malicious smile.

So I did.

I could feel the Ghosts drawing closer to us. Every paranormal sensation they inspired was dramatically increased by the diminishing distance between me and the stranger. By the time I stood but half a meter from him, I was burning, drowning, freezing, aging, and dying to fall to my knees and beg for an end to the grief and the terror.

But I denied every spirit the satisfaction of my fear. I would not feed them, or display weakness to their Channeler.

"Waiver of Immunity, as assigned to the aforementioned by the High Justiciar of the Indigo Confederacy, yadda-yadda-yadda…" I rolled my eyes as I read past the legal notification. The document was signed by the High Justiciar Adamus Oscarin **III** himself, warranting full legal immunity to the stranger, but the recipient's provided name was-

"Anonymous. Nice name." I strained a threatening grin at the stranger. He closed his weary eyes and chuckled again.

"Anonymous for matters pertaining to both personal privacy and national security. I can assure you, Ranger Zane… The document is legitimate." The stranger shook his head, as though he was amused.

I wasn't.

"So, Anonymous… What brings you to Viridian? I take it that you're not from Kanto nor Johto, are you?" I returned the document with a suspicious tone. Consular Immunity or not, I was getting some answers out of this freak.

"My business is my own, Ranger." The fucker even sound friendly when he answered me.

"But with a fruity accent like that, you sure as hell aren't from Indigo." I tried the friendly approach, attempting to discern whether or not it it stirred him up as much as it riled me up.

If it did, he didn't show it.

"My accent was inherited from my birthland. I do believe that my ears detect a distinct Kantonese accent from your voice. Your dialect is... Saffron? No. Celedon." The stranger smiled up at me, clearly enjoying the dumbfounded expression that I was giving him. Could he tell where I was from just by listening to my voice or-

"You know, it really isn't polite of you to have your Ghosts digging up info on me." I hissed. The stranger was laughing now.

"Subterfuge, Ranger? Really, I'm embarrassed that you would think me so low as to 'dig up' your personal information with my revenants." The smiling stranger was playing a game with me, and I did not approve.

"You don't spit when you talk, so you're not from Unova. You aren't wearing a talisman of Arceus openly, so it's unlikely that you're from Sinnoh. Your clothes are far too warm to have been bought in the tropical island of Hoenn… Leaving only Kalos. That explains your fashion sense. And I'd bet my paycheck that you bitch about our coffee too." I hit him with a taste of my own logical deduction. The smile changed slightly. Less amused.

A tad more respectful.

"I would never refer to the piddle served in a Kantonese cafe as _coffee_." The Kalosian snob had just freely given himself away.

"You stuck-up Kalosian drape." I grinned snidely at my new worst friend.

"My effluent Kantonese ape." He smiled pleasantly right back at the Fucking Bastard. I didn't really know where to go from here. I had his nationality pinned, but I doubted that I was going to get anything more out of him by playing nice. I needed to go direct.

"So what kind of Shades are eating you?" I asked, giving him my biggest, meanest, nastiest grin. He in turn, gave me his.

And it left me shuddering.

"The unfriendly to persistent Rangers kind, Mister Bastard."

That was a warning. I didn't know how far his diplomatic immunity covered him, but I had a sneaking suspicion that even without that document, this guy would ice me for annoying him without a second thought.

Now I may be a cocky shit, but I'm only still alive because I know my limits.

And I only press them when absolutely necessary.

"Whatever. This discussion was getting boring anyways. Have a nice visit in Kanto, Mister Crypt. Try not to bitch about the coffee _too loudly._ " I growled the last word as I turned around, and made to stalk away.

A hiss of cloth stopped me dead with a pointy tip pressing up against my navel.

Oh shit...

-Had I gone too far?

"Let him go, Pariah."

I was locked up cold. I couldn't see it.

 _But I could feel it looking me in the eyes._

I could sense the tip of the blade scraping across my uniform, and its razored edge aligning across my abdomen. I could detect the practice stroke being softly drawn, before the blade rested on my stomach again. I was stunned with pure terror.

It was going to disembowel me.

" _Pariah…_ I gave you an _order_ …" The stranger's dangerous voice was even more horrifying when he was angry. I could almost hear otherworldly screams echoing in his eldritch intonation.

The blade pressed tightly against my gut, before whipping away with a sudden check. When the passing seconds revealed that no body severing blow was to follow, I could finally breathe again. A hoarse voice spoke unseen from behind me, layered with wonder and curiosity.

"He certainly doesn't like you, Ranger… He doesn't like you at all. How very odd…"

I didn't stick around to ponder the oddness of it all. I shamelessly hauled my limping ass and hightailed it away from the stranger and his Ghosts. I left the terminal, and ran as far away from that freak as Viridian's walls could allow. Then I ran south towards Pallet Town, desperately trying to put as much distance between me and the stranger as was possible. I never wanted to see him or his eidolons again.

Too bad for me.

TH had to come back and haunt me.

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	6. Chapter V: Living On Prayers

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 **The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero**

 _Written by,_

 **Vile M.F. Slanders**

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 **V**

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" _ **...Nemo Me Impune Lacessit... (...No one provokes me with impunity...)"**_ _-Motto inscribed upon the Kalosian Royal Crown._

 **-v-**

 **Chapter V: Living On Prayers**

Pewter City...

The City of I've been here before.

-Moving on.

My first stop after leaving the midnight shuttle was a bar. I needed some stiff drinks.

A lot of them.

I was still afraid.

I was afraid to sleep. I was afraid to be alone. I was afraid of black clothing.

I was afraid of the Goddamn shadows.

That freak from the Viridian terminal was still fucking with me. I couldn't get it out of my head. I kept seeing it whenever I closed my eye.

His grey eyes.

Watching him die in the most unnatural way.

That fucking smile making my life worth less than shit.

I had been fucking helpless.

I'm never helpless.

I always know what I'm doing.

-But I couldn't do anything…

I don't know if it was the Ghosts. I don't know if it was those eyes. I don't know if it was watching him die. I don't know if it was that smile…

But all I heard…

...And all I saw…

-Was my Echo…

After fleeing the terminal in Viridian, I ran halfway to Pallet Town before I hit the ground in panicked exhaustion. Then I crawled my ass through the dirt and up a tree, just trying to hide myself in the foliage. And I cried. I couldn't shake it. I could even find enough sense call up Vauban for support.

I was in the Long Sway…

-And everybody was dying all over again…

And I was helpless.

…

I woke up. It was early morning. I was huddled on a bench. My head was trying to kill me, and my cotton tongue was doing its damnedest to choke me with its vile taste.

"Fuck…" I pushed myself up. The bar I had patronized last night was right behind me. A collection of empty bottles rolled off of the bench when I moved.

Guess I didn't close when the bars did.

 _And I was living it raw._

" _-Fuck…"_ Trying to stand up was a bad idea. The whole world flipped over when I did. Until this moment, I didn't know that it was possible to be both inebriated and hungover at the same time.

Once this morning's binge had painted the Pewter sidewalk with hops, I wiped my mouth off with a hand and flicked the phlegmy froth my fingertips.

I was hankering for a toothbrush after that one, let me tell you.

My last memory from earlier this morning wasn't all that grand.

Just a bottle of gin with the base raised to the ceiling, and my lips on the brim.

That was it.

I might have made the news last night, and I'll be damned if I could remember any of it.

It wasn't until I found a public restroom with a graffiti-carved mirror that I saw the bruises and cuts on my face.

Yeah, I had made _somebody's_ news last night.

…

I stood on the Pewter City Gym steps. Talk about a hole in the wall. You could've mistaken this place for a laundromat.

It wasn't until I barged in and strutted halfway to the counter, that I realized-

-It was a laundromat.

I chuked all over the floor of the establishment in surprise, apologized to the startled clerk behind the counter, and then quickly left.

 _Now_ I was standing on the Gym steps. And this place looked like the Pewter City Gym. It was fashioned out of the same crudely cut stones that comprised the Pewter City walls, and was nestled in the city's northeastern corner. Most the surrounding city's precincts had buried their history in the pursuit of modernization, but the city's Gym block looked exactly the same as it always had, back when this rude building had served the city as the militia's barracks.

This part of the city didn't even have street lamps on its cobbled road, that was how traditional the Pewter City Gym Leaders kept it.

Though the Gym itself was simply hideous in its unapologetic simplicity and unrefined architecture, there was an inexplicable charm to the otherwise foreboding establishment.

Especially for me.

The coarse walls of the Pewter Gym had been erected to weather the onslaught of both the mon and the ages, and here it still stood, eleven-hundred years after the first stone had been set.

A functioning testament to humanity's ability to resist all adversities.

I crossed under the Gym's stone porticus and pulled open the heavy wooden door. Whereas the Gym city block itself had maintained the illusion of antiquity, the interior of the establishment was lit by electric lights and filled with modern conveniences. A lobby stationed with comfortable sofas and a cinematic theatre played a loop of clips detailing the Gym Leader's triumphs and accolades. The speakers blared a bass heavy rock song to scenes of revived fossil Pokemon destroying both Lorelei and Bruno of last season's Elite Four, before providing a list of dates when Brock was available for Gym challenges. His schedule rotated once every five days, and a quick look revealed that Brock wouldn't be publicly competing for another three.

I headed to the front desk, trying to conceal my drunken status.

From the look given to me by the clerk, I could tell that I had failed.

Then I remembered that I was in uniform, and that wary stinkeye probably had something to do with me serving in the capacity of a mon-killer.

"Can I help you, _Ranger?_ "

Yep. She hated me just because of my profession.

I could live with that.

"I'm here to register for a Gym challenge." I answered curtly. That caused a double take from the clerk.

"A Ranger in a Gym battle? That's cute. What, do you actually think that you can kill Brock's Pokemon?" The snide four-eyed bitch was treating me like a belligerent child.

"Well, shit happens in unrestricted formats. Now are you going to provide me with the legal disclaimers or not?" I gave her a toothy grin. I wasn't going to waste any of my considerable charm on this broad, but I sure as hell wasn't going to let her rile me up either.

"Oh! Of course! Just as soon as you provide me with your League issued Trainer's Licence… You do have a certification for League competition, don't you Ranger?" Oh, that sarcastic whore was giving me the witch's grin. She was operating under the assumption that the League's ban on Rangers competing within their bureaucracy still applied to me.

I was about to get one hell of laugh.

I procured my Tact. pad and pulled up my Trainer's License.

"Be sure to pay close attention to the first three letters on my serial tag." I smiled all nice-like at the glowering clerk, who seemed to think that I was wasting her time.

But it was the other way around. One look at the _ACE_ stamped on my serial tag froze her stiff.

She thought that I was a Spook.

And she had just been lipping off to a member of the secret service.

"Um... -I, ah... -I…"

Oh yeah, she was stammering and turning pale now.

"Just put my name on the next available challenge date, and I _might_ forget about all of this around lunchtime." My evil smile was audible in my intonation.

The bitch had no further words to spit at me. It was just the klickety-klack of a keyboard and a nervous lip chewing from her ass.

A printer next to her console buzzed into life, as a series of documents were fashioned bearing my credentials.

Handing me the sheets and a pen, the wide-eyed and pleading clerk satisfied my request.

"Now was that so hard?" I gloated.

The clerk could only shudder.

She passively observed my review and signing of the Gym's disclaimers. Everything proceeded quietly right up until I arrived at the section that requested my predilection of challenge.

My pen skipped past the "Restricted Format" header, and my signature found its way beneath the "Unrestricted Format" portion.

"You might want to start off on restricted. Your License ranks you as a Novice. Unrestricted is normally only requested in the Premiership and Championship-" The clerk shut right up when she looked at my face. My impatient eyes had finally conveyed the message.

I knew what unrestricted format was.

All bars removed, and all bans put a side.

A Pokemon battle with no safeties engaged, where anything goes and mon dying was casually regarded as an 'unfortunate outcome.'

It was everyday life for a Ranger.

"Two days from today, correct?" I asked, handing the clerk my signed documents.

"Your match is scheduled at five-thirty pm. Challenger number four of five. A former applicant requested a private match at the end of the day, and any late applicants will have to adhere to the policy. The doors close at five o'clock in the evening. No spectators save for other challengers are permitted within the Pit after then, nor will any challengers present at the time of closed-doors be authorized to leave before the final match's conclusion. Please arrive before five o'clock, and do be aware that it is a three kilometer hike to the Pit." The clerk filled me in on the trivials after giving me the only meritorious answer.

"Glad to hear it. Enjoy the rest of your day." I said it with a smile, causing the clerk to wilt. She handed me my copy of the disclaimers, and then I headed back out into Pewter.

"Call Fuck-nuts." I instructed my Tact. Pad once I was out on the Gym stairs. A hail was sent to the contact, before a disgruntled Chris Lebreau answered the phone.

"Zane, is that you?"

"Oh, don't worry Chris, I'm just as happy as you are to be hearing your voice." I replied, eyes already rolling.

"You take care of your Gym registration?" Chris asked.

"Just finished. I'm in the ring two days from now, challenger four of five. Scheduled at seventeen-hundred and a half hours. Private showcase, so no cameras." I listened to Chris's brain snapping in the background.

"A private showcase?! What were you thinking, requesting a private match?! WE NEED YOU ON THE AIR, YOU IDIOT!" Chris was flying off the handle.

"Wasn't me, shithead. Another applicant request private. It just so happens that my match is scheduled after closed-doors." I answered Chris in my unconcerned voice, knowing full well how much Chris enjoyed being blown off.

"WHAT KIND OF STUPID FUCK WOULD REQUEST A PRIVATE-"

"-I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT THIS IS HAPPENING!"

"-WE NEED PEWTER TO HOLD OFF THE CURFEW-"

"-GET YOUR ASS BACK IN THERE, AND TELL BROCK-!"

I had already buried my eyes in a hand. I still had a throbbing headache, and Chris's shouting wasn't making it any better.

"Chris, this is the way it has to be. Unless you want me to sit on my ass and wait for the next available session, which may or may not have camera crews for the other challengers, I have to take down Brock in a private setting." I grumbled. I heard Chris break something on his end.

"You don't get it, Zane… I got you a camera crew! They're nothing major, and they're independent of any televised syndicates, but we could have at least started your competition portfolio with some footage of your early League career! Think about what that footage could be worth if we ever do a documentary!" Chris was winding down. He was that frustrated with me.

Good.

I must be doing something right then.

"Chris, I have an idea on how to make this work to our advantage. A private match is absolutely ideal for what I have in mind. Trust me, I'll make a flash, and somewhere down the lines, someone's gonna see it." I said. Chris just sighed.

"Please tell me that you've worked out a better plan than just poisoning Brock's Onix?"

That actually made me smile.

"Trust me, Chris… That Onix is my last concern right now. I'd be more worried about the fallout if I were you." There was a long silence after that.

"I'm checking the League registry now… Yep. Your name is already listed under the Pewter City Gym challenges- UNRESTRICTED?!"

There goes another gasket on my PR agent.

I wonder when his heart will finally rupture.

"There's a reason for that, Chris…" My tone implied a warning.

"-I'm sure there's a reason for it. I just looked up your League certified team. Vauban, Cortez, and Darwin. You're fucked, Zane. You are totally fucked." Chris was utterly burned out.

"You know what is funny? What that roster you're looking at doesn't show you." I was grinning when I said it.

That drew a pause.

"Zane, if it isn't registered, it can't compete. So if you finally got your hands on some G.I. firepower-"

"Chris, review section eight of High Command's adopted League Certified Ranger Doctrine, then cross reference that material with the League Legislation's adherence to foreign registries. Most notably, check the footnote pertaining to _Wallace vs. Will_ from six years ago. Then correlate the Hoenn League registry with that date. Look up Wallace's team. Then add it all up." I was chuckling by the end.

"Give me a second." Chris actually sounded intrigued by my recommendation. It took him about five minutes to review the highlighted material and correlate the data. Giving me the time required to find a vendor who could provide me with a brew to ease the hangover.

"...You clever Bastard." Chris was genuinely impressed.

"-It's risky, and you'll only be able to pull it off once in the League… But it's brilliant."

"Worst case scenario? I get cited for kiting. But even then? I can contest it under the-"

"So that's why you opted for unrestricted! Holy shit, Zane! If you pull this off-"

"Then I can make Brock think that he's punishing me, when in reality, Brock is actually giving me exactly what my PR agent wants." I summed it up for Chris, throwing in a little hint at an ulterior motive. Chris wasn't going to ask what it was.

Chris liked surprises.

The freak.

"Okay, you have a game plan this time. And this one could cause even more controversy than Vauban toppling an Onix if it gets out. _Make sure it gets out._ " Chris said.

"Affirmative. Now does this mean that I won't have to deal with your bullshit until Cerulean?" I asked. Chris just laughed.

"That depends. Now go fine tune your battle strategy, Zane. Buh-bye." A click on Chris's end gave me the solace that I'd been dreaming of.

"Go fuck yourself, Chris." I told the silent Tact. pad mournfully. I went to put it away, but a sudden temptation stopped me.

"Alexandria. Scan Pewter City's residential phone listings. Call Tammy. And don't pretend like you don't know who I'm talking about."

…

"Well, look at you." I smiled as my date arrived at the disclosed location. Tammy dismounted her electricycle, and made straight for me with worried eyes.

"Catch you on lunch break?" I asked, noticing her Policewoman's uniform.

"Yeah… Zane, you look like somebody beat you up!" Tammy reached up to prod a bruise below my eye.

"I think somebody did. I can't remember." I just chuckled, brushing the minor wounds off.

"You're drunk!" Tammy cried out, noticing my one bleary eye and my sickly complexion.

"Was. I'm hungover now." Check one big ol'smile for the aspiring Inspector.

"Who asks a girl out on a date when they're hungover?!" Tammy cried out, scandalized.

"Tough, handsome, smart motherfuckers who haven't seen the most beautiful woman in all of Kanto for a whole month?" I gave Tammy that charming smirk that I'd been saving just for her.

Tammy slipped. She wanted to be angry with me, but the flattery had left its mark.

Namely in the bashful fluttering of lashes and the rising blush.

"Well… It has been a while." Tammy's voice was a cautious warning.

But she wasn't fooling me.

"A while? Girl, I saw you every time I closed my eyes... But it only made the longing worse."

Tammy giggled when she punched me.

Score.

She loved the sappy shit.

"...At any rate, sorry for being barely presentable. I had a bit of a… disturbing occurrence yesterday." I muttered.

"What kind of-"

"-A Ghost Trainer. Leave it at that." I swallowed. Tammy's eyes widened.

"Did you get-"

"-Haunted? No. Oh God, I hope not… but it was… an extremely unpleasant encounter." I shuddered in the warm morning air.

"Do the Rangers know about it?" Tammy asked nervously.

"From the vibe this guy was sending me… The Rangers can't legally do a thing about his presence in Kanto. Please Tammy, can we not bring this up? I don't think that I'll be sleeping for a month after what happened yesterday..." I wasn't feigning the begging expression on my face, or the pale skin.

Even in the broad sunlight, I was terrified of the mere memory.

"Okay… Um… Maybe this a bad time to break it to you?"

Oh God, please don't tell me that you're pregnant-

"-You're not going to like this place…"

-Dodged that bullet.

"Let me guess… Vegetarian, right?"

"Maybe?" Tammy looked embarrassed.

"Tammy, I'm a Ranger. It doesn't matter if it's rotting flesh or rotting vegetable matter, I'll eat it with a smile."

"Zane, that is so gross!" Tammy slugged me in the shoulder, nearly bowling me over with her fist.

"Easy, woman! Goddamn, save it for the bedroom!"

Tammy and I situated ourselves on opposite ends of a booth. I suppose that some people would have called us picturesque. Me, a strapping Ranger in his uniform; and Tammy, a sexy Police Officer in hers.

But if someone decided to raise a camera on Tammy and I, the offender would find their photographic device suddenly thrust up their asshole.

Don't take my picture if I don't ask you to.

"So you made it." Tammy whispered. I shot her a curious glance.

"The Venomoth situation." Tammy clarified.

"Yeah, that was a trip." I snorted. Tammy swallowed.

"I tried calling you through Command, but they said that you were indisposed-"

"-Fucking lazy ass Walkout Comm Officers… Indisposed my dick! I was in a fucking bed for most of the month!" I was genuinely pissed off.

Telephone sex would have been a great way to pass the time while I recovered.

"In a bed? I thought that you- Oh!" Tammy caught on to the implication shortly after she'd opened her mouth to start talking.

"Yeah. In a bed. I only saw action on my first day back. Then it was all bedrest and bloodswaps for Zane Bastard." I shrugged. I'd survived the ordeal. No sense making a scene over it.

Tammy didn't quite share my opinion though.

"What happened?"

"I inhaled a lethal amount of Venomoth wing dust. No big deal."

Both of Tammy's hands clapped over her mouth.

"...Oh my God-"

"-Tammy, I'm fine. I feel just as shitty as I did before the Venomoths poisoned me. You don't have to-"

"-Zane, you could have died!" Tammy exploded across the booth.

Holy shit.

She was crying?

"I listened everyday to the casualty reports… I called Command as often as I could-"

"Tammy, relax. Did you really think that a fucking Venomoth could kill me?" I gave Tammy my cheesy grin, hoping it would end this awkward moment before it became too public.

In truth, I was touched.

But I was feeling ragged guilty too.

"Zane… What if it had killed you?" Tammy asked. I sighed.

"Then you would have heard my name on the casualty reports."

"Don't joke like that!" Tammy glared at me, but one look into my weathered expression told her that this was no jest.

"It happens, Tammy. It happens a lot. This Venomoth season hit us hard. Viridian actually needed backup. Did you hear about the Blackhat Strike we had to call in for?" I asked. Tammy withered into her padded booth.

Our appetizers arrived, lightly oiled and seasoned breadsticks with an accompaniment of tossed cashew and beansprout salads.

My appetizers disappeared in matter of minutes.

Tammy's remained untouched when I finished that meager course.

"Tammy, come on. I've seen enough tears this past month. Could you smile for me? Please?" I punctuated my heartfelt plea with a shit-eating grin. The sudden transition broke through Tammy's inhibitions and forced a swelling of giggles from her.

"Fuck you, Zane-"

"-In public? Again? I'm game." Big ol'smile for my red faced date.

"-Don't talk about that _so loudly._ " Tammy started off pretty loud herself, but ended in a sharp whisper. Her nervous eyes were darting from one end of the restaurant to the other.

But she was smiling, even if it was an embarrassed smile. I chortled and leaned back. Tammy started on her appetizers, while I just eased into the setting.

This was one of the first peaceful non-boring moments that I had experienced this month. I wanted to enjoy it. Unfortunately-

"But anyways, Zane… I listened to the casualty reports. A lot of Rangers died this season, didn't they?" I buried my face into a hand and massaged my eye sockets.

Tammy didn't know when to quit.

"So is it really as bad as they're letting on?" Tammy asked softly. I sighed.

"It's worse than that." I replied. Tammy looked at me in shock.

"So the whispers about the draft-"

"-I'm not talking about that." I interrupted Tammy. High Command wanted to keep that under the radar for as long as possible. Just to avoid social upheaval.

"Listen, Tammy… It's bad. Really bad. So bad that High Command has me working with ACE in the League. Now don't be spilling that out. You'd piss off me, the Rangers, and _ACE_ if the public ever got wind of it _._ Now, the Rangers and myself won't do anything to you. But the Spooks? They have a pretty heartless methodology. For your own sake, please… Don't go digging into this matter." I had to quell her curiosity now, before Tammy's aspiring Inspector nose buried itself into something that she didn't want any part of.

"But why is it so bad?" Tammy asked. My palm found my face. I was that exasperated.

"Because we are losing the fight. The Rangers don't have the support we need. We can hold the mon off now, maybe even for another decade, but we are in decline. If we don't address the personnel problem now, the world our great-grandparents grew up in is gonna come back to haunt us." I answered grimly.

"You don't honestly think that it'll be that bad, do you?" Tammy tried to jest about the dire portent with a nervous grin.

I just shook my head.

"No, I don't think. _I know_. The Frontier will be right up against the city walls, and humanity will be under constant siege. Again." I grumbled. Tammy licked her lips, and fearful look tightened her brow.

"So what do the Rangers intend to do about it?" Tammy asked.

"We're trying to raise awareness." I answered. Tammy just laughed.

"Trying? Zane, the recruitment adverts run nonstop. It's almost annoying. Most people tune them out anymore-"

"-Most people are idiots." I growled. Tammy quirked her head with an incredulous expression on her face.

"Well, I'd agree with you on most fronts-"

"Really? Only most? Which ones don't you agree on?" I asked. Tammy stiffened.

"The one that we're talking about for starters." Tammy replied in an icy tone. I snorted in derision.

"Right. Then you're just part of the problem. Another ignorant cog in the social machine that's milling out it's own demise." I growled.

"Are you really just going to write society off like that, Zane?" Tammy asked.

"Well, _society_ hasn't exactly provided me with much else to go on, so-"

"-You need to pull your head out of your ass, _Ranger_." Tammy spat. I sat back in my booth.

If Tammy had a suggestion, then I was all ears.

And I was ready to poke gaping holes into her suggestion too.

"The problem with you, Zane… Is that you approach everything like a Ranger does. It's always do or die with you. There is no inbetween. You don't empathize with anyone not wearing a beret. You don't even try to view the world from their perspective. You'd just rather write them up as a lost cause." Tammy was panting in a fit of passion.

It seemed as though Tammy had been wanting to get this off of her chest for some time now.

Can't say that I was surprised.

She knew me, after all.

"Think about it from a civilian's perspective. People are born in the safety of the city walls. They stay well inside those walls for most of their lives. They are raised alongside all manner of mon that humanity has domesticated for advancement and convenience. Children grow up watching cartoon adaptations of their favorite Pokemon. The commercial sector hits society from every angle with mon-affiliated entertainment products. Children attend a school system, where the League is all the rage amongst their peers and teachers, and everyone of them dreams of becoming the League Champion. They grow to adulthood in this setting, becoming more and more absorbed by this walled off little slice of paradise. Imagine that for a moment." Tammy took a deep breath, before pressing on.

"Then imagine that one day, these civilians turn on the telly, and there's this guy in a red beret telling them that they need to join the fight against the mon. That humanity needs to wage a war against the ever present threat poised by the murderous and bloodthirsty Pokemon. Guess what? This ever present threat?" Tammy paused for effect, and stared right into my eye.

" _Where is it?_ The Pewter City walls have only been attacked by wild mon a _grand total_ of twenty-three times in the last fifty years. Not one of those attacks breached the walls before the Rangers and the Trainers fought the mon off. What kind of threat do the mon poise when there is no reinforcement to support the recruiter's claim of danger? People are going to look down at the Skitty snoozing in their laps, see a Pokemon that loves and adores them, then look at the Ranger on the television and call him fucking nuts." Tammy winded down. I sat there, working my jaw.

It was a rational set of circumstances that Tammy had provided me with...

-But it was too much for me to swallow.

"...And all the while, the Rangers are killing themselves out in the Frontier, just so people can live this illusion. Go ahead. Ask me to separate myself from that. Tell me to forget about all the Rangers… All my friends and family who have died to support these people. Regardless of the people's want for peace, Tammy… Want isn't enough to secure it. I've seen the price of peace. I've played my role paying it. I won't forget them. Not ever." I was fighting back the tears.

Tammy knew me well enough to see them.

"-I'm not saying that you're wrong, Zane. I just think that you and the Rangers need to assume a different approach when dealing with the private sector. People aren't Pokemon. You can't just force them to understand." Tammy whispered.

"Which is why I think that they're stupid." I added venomously. Tammy sighed.

"What you think isn't always accurate, Zane. And that imprecision will lead you onto the wrong path. You want to save humanity? Then you have to understand it from the whole. Not just a Ranger's perspective."

That left me speechless.

Tammy had scored a registered hit.

A deep one.

I had to take a moment to collect myself before carrying on.

"-I don't know any other way, Tammy…"

"-Then learn one." Tammy shot at me.

Hit.

The distant look on my face betrayed the turmoil that Tammy's assertion had left me with. She respectfully gave me a moment to brood, before Tammy decided to change the topic.

Slightly.

"So are you going to tell me why you dragged a kid out into the Frontier now?" Tammy asked. I looked up in shock.

"-We got a report on the same day that you bugged out to Viridian to deal with the Venomoth. Some parents apparently had to console their child after he was attacked by a Beedrill. Out in the Frontier. And accompanied by a Ranger with a Bulbasaur." Tammy looked at me severely.

"How is Tony doing by the way?" I asked, pleasantly. Tammy drummed her fingers off of the table.

"The kid is fine. Shaken up, but fine. Now why did you do it?" Tammy asked. I swallowed.

The irony was almost pathetic.

"Because he wanted to be a Ranger… And I didn't want him to die."

"What do you mean by that?" Tammy asked, her voice growing irritated.

"I meant that I didn't want Tony to become a Ranger. He's not cut out for it, and I didn't want to be the recruiter who put him in a grave." I grumbled. Tammy froze.

"...You're a lousy recruiter, Zane." Tammy snorted.

"Yeah… Well there's a reason for that…" I stared at the far edge of the table, not really seeing it. I was at the bloody ledge. One little push was all it would take now. Even now, I could hear it. I could see it. I could feel it coming back-

"...I heard about your first Command… I'm sorry, Zane…"

That was the push.

I got up from my seat, and quickly left the table.

I ignored Tammy's wounded outcry of my name.

I could barely hear it as I pushed open the restaurant's door.

My hobbling feet were pounding down on the pavement, as I breathed their names again.

Amber.

Pete.

Erin.

Carlos.

Brenda...

I was done.

I wasn't a recruiter.

I wasn't fit to be a Ranger.

High Command wanted a hero.

-But I'm no hero…

Else I'd still have my Echo...

None of this made any sense…

...And I feared it never would.

…

I rose from the mattress. Vauban rolled off my chest. A nearly naked Cortez was at my side in an instant, separate, but supportive.

"Fuck me… How long was I out?" I grabbed my bedside clock.

It was Eleven-hundred-hours.

I had lunch with Tammy at Twelve-hundred-hours.

"Oh shit…"

I had slept a whole day away.

So much for the Ghosts.

I suppose that my body and mind could only tolerate so much abuse before my being collapsed from sheer exhaustion, the haunting spirits be damned.

"Come on. We're getting out. Now." I grumbled. I was still in yesterday's BDU. I had simply fallen on my bed after I had hastily settled my stay at the hotel's front desk.

Vauban and Cortez fell into stride at either side of me, and I took leave of my purchased room.

I passed straight through the hotel's lobby without even a parting glance.

I had an obligation to attend to.

Setting a steady march into the downtown region, I headed off towards a familiar locale in Pewter.

Well, by familiar, I mean to say that I have been there once before.

Just a Ranger's favorite haunt.

The old Pokemart.

It was the same establishment that I had patronized before in my last visit.

There was a new clerk behind the counter this time, who was slightly less nervous about a Ranger's presence than the previous one.

"How can I help you, Ranger?" He was younger than me, and clearly naive of a Ranger's disposition towards Pokemarts and their clientele.

"I need to rent a Tank. A secure one. Large." I reported. The Clerk froze.

"Umm… Rent a Tank?"

"As in me paying you for continued use of a Tank? Yes." I grumbled.

"I uh, I'll get a manager for you. One sec." The Clerk disappeared into the rear room, leaving me to simmer at the counter.

"...Cortez?" I looked down at my hairless scarred dog, working my mouth. Cortez looked up at me.

"You look like shit. Just thought that you should know." I said it deadpan.

Cortez lifted a paw and flicked it twice.

 _Affirmative._

That got me chuckling.

"Mister Ranger?" A new voice from the counter called my attention away from my dog.

"You can keep it at Ranger." I turned about to address a plump balding man.

"I understand that you wish to rent a Tank?" The manager was ever so polite in his perplexity.

"Affirmative." I answered. The manager crossed his arms.

"Is there a reason for why you wish to rent a Tank?"

"My fish needs time out of his Pokeball. He was injured in duty, and his recovery requires prolonged R&R." I replied. The manager frowned.

"Aren't there-"

"He needs to regrow his scales. A Pokemon Center can't just staple new ones on. And I will not dump him off at an understaffed Daycare center. I need a secure location for his Tank, because he is quite valuable." I gave the manager the abridged version, hoping that it would answer any further questions.

"What kind of fish are we talking about?" The manager sounded intrigued now.

Here comes the punchline-

"A Magikarp."

The manager slumped with a look of exasperation.

He thought that I was yanking his chain.

"If that's the case, just fillet the fish and catch a new one. Look, we're trying to run a business here. If you Rangers are that bored-"

I interrupted him with a slammed palm on the counter. My cold gaze kept his mouth shut. Slowly removing my hand from the counter, I pointedly slid the previously palm-concealed Expense Account card across the glossy surface with an index finger.

"It needs to be a big Tank. Preferably one in a locked room."

The manager was dumbfounded.

He wasn't so sure that I was joking anymore.

"The lease is negotiable, though it will be within reason. As well as the Tank, I will also be purchasing seventy pounds of your heavy protein and carbohydrate blend per diem. Not to mention regular doses of ganoid scale rejuvenation tablets. But if your business isn't interested in my patronage, would you be so _kind_ as to direct me to an establishment that would?"

Despite my authority as a Ranger, I couldn't just commandeer a Tank from a business without martial law being imposed before hand, and given the unusual nature of my proposition, the manager was well within his rights to simply tell me 'no'.

So this is me being unwillingly charming.

I think the term most people use is 'civil'.

"How long will you be needing the Tank?"

-The bait had been taken…

"No more than a week, if even that."

The manager rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"Well… We might be able to work something out…"

-The hook has been set...

"Good. While we work the details out, chalk me up a pair of the daily specials for the other two members of my Squad. One all meat and the other mixed. With extra teriyaki."

...Now reel them in.

Less than half an hour later, the manager was directing me on a tour of the Pokemart's rear facilities. It never ceases to amaze me when I discover just how big the invisible infrastructure of a facility really is.

But the novelty is short lived.

"-All of this is just simple storage of course, but we have a aromatherapy clinic right over by the main office-" The manager was highlighting the establishment's single most boring details with all the candor of a Silph Co. Tour guide.

It was annoying, but I smiled and feigned interest.

We had already settled on a price.

Now the manager needed to win my customs.

'Cause I was offering him some _good_ fucking business.

"-This room is generally used for moist storage. As you can see, it does have a padlock, and only the managers and the store owner have access to the key. This is where I think we can set up your Magikarp's accommodations-"

The manger fumbled with a keyring dangling from his waist.

"I hope that key doesn't find its way into some less than obscure location when it's not on your person." Try as I might, I couldn't keep the suspicion out of my voice.

"On our off-hours, we lock it in a combination safe. Only the managers know the combination. I assure you, Ranger Zane, that your Magikarp will be quite safe here." The manager waved my concern away with a carefree gesture.

That alone inspired some sense of confidence in me.

"I hope so, otherwise I will be taking this establishment to court over a lost sum of seven-thousand-eight-hundred Sandz…"

Hint:

 _It had better be secure._

"-What kind of Magikarp are we talking about?!" The manager was flabbergasted by my warning.

"The eats seventy-pounds of food a day, and wears a fucking medal for exemplary service kind of Magikarp." I answered.

The manager froze stiff.

"...A big fish?" The manager asked warily.

"Bigger than a Goddamn Tauros." I answered with a smile.

"Umm… Right. Well then… Over here we have the old employee break room. I'll have the staff clear it out at once-"

…

"Darwin, report." I released my decorated Magikarp into the massive Tank that had been rigged together in the repurposed breakroom.

"Oh my stars..."

Yeah, the manager was impressed.

"Abstain, Darwin." I gave my customary order upon his release.

The flopping ceased instantly.

"Your ass is on R&R, Darwin. Now I know it's cramped, but the aerator and sump pump will keep a steady supply of oxygen-rich water moving over your gills, so you can just consider that abstinence a standing order." I tapped the glass of Darwin's Tank when I gave him the sit-rep.

"I'll be back to feed you later. If something comes up and I'm unable to tend to you personally, the staff here will see to it that you are fed." Darwin swam closer to my fingertips on the glass, and I quickly removed them.

"Get your fat ass better soon, Darwin. I'm gonna have you squashing Caterpies with that fucking bulk when I break you back into the combat regimen." I gave my fish a salute as a formal means of farewell, before backtracking my steps towards the storefront again.

"Okay girls, that's enough." I dismissed the pair of Pokemon masseuses that had been thrown in as a complimentary service of the Pokemart.

The attendants were both males, but I had secured my interests with the manager.

Now I could go back to being the Fucking Bastard.

Vauban was sad to see her spa treatment go.

Cortez was grateful that the invasive prodding had finally ended.

My dog did not take well to being caressed.

Especially not with all of his hair still missing.

"What am I going to do with you, Cortez?" I chuckled as my ugly pooch fought off a case of the heebie-jeebies. Vauban was wilting next to him, gazing longingly at the retreating masseuses.

"Buck up, Vauban. I might need your help with something soon, so wipe that forlorn expression off your face. You and Cortez are going to assist me with welcoming a new squadmate of ours. And both of you had better hope that it's not a contact greeting."

That got my dog and dinosaur's attention at once.

…

I looked north, back towards Pewter City's south gate. I had put down roughly four klicks of distance between me and the archaic city.

It probably wasn't far enough.

Two klicks further south down the Viridian bound Route, and I came upon one of the many knolls that broke the Route wall's otherwise uniformly parallel stretch.

Descending down the far side of the knoll into an enclosed grassy habitat, I found an ideal location for the introduction. Maintaining a respectable distance away from the Route wall itself, I steeled myself for the confrontation that awaited my discretion.

"Vauban, Cortez-" I looked down to my two mon, a nervous expression worn openly on my face.

Both my mon were struggling to conceal theirs.

"-When he comes out, do not make any sudden moves. And no matter what he hits me with, _do not_ intervene. At all. If we piss him off too much, then it will likely be the Snorlax all over again. And I really don't want to radio Command and call in a strike against my own mon. Just stay cool, take whatever he pelts us with, and _pray that he remembers who I am._ If this is one of his bad days…" I shuddered, failing to inspire myself or my mon with confidence.

Vauban was bug-eyed and quaking.

Cortez swallowed hard and locked his legs against the tremors.

"Doug… Please be right about me… just this once…" I murmured, lifting a Heavy Ball from my hip. I paused before releasing the occupant.

I needed a moment to summon my nerve.

"Okay… here we go…" I took a rattling breath, and pressed the Heavy Ball's release trigger in time with a bold new order.

"Damascus, report."

As the beam of white light condensed and calibrated in accordance to my fourth mon's expansive dimensions, I found myself begging-

-Please don't destroy the Route walls…

-Please don't kill me...

 _...Please?_

…

The whine of an electricycle stirred me from my daze. I gingerly signalled to Cortez.

Intercept, and guide her to me.

My limping hound took off at my command. Vauban was nestled below my chin, a massive bruise had discolored her entire face. I gently prodded her away, and fought my non-compliant body for routine dictation.

I struggled to pull myself into a sitting position, gasping as the world throbbed in my white vision.

Come on, Zane…

Put on the tough guy face.

"Zane?"

Here we go-

"Zane-?! OH MY GOD!"

A perfectly dignified reaction.

"Hey, Tammy." I smiled up at the shellshocked Policewoman.

"Oh my God… What happened?!" Tammy was turning white as she rifled through my field pack and whipped out my Trauma Kit.

Three seconds later, she was mopping the blood off of my brow.

 _-Well that explained the dizziness…_

"It's just a facial abrasion. They bleed a lot. I'll be fine." I almost fell over when she touched me.

So much for the tough guy reassurances.

"Come on, Zane. Stay upright. Keep that gash above heart level… Oh my God…" Tammy got a good look at the rest of me.

"Zane, I need to call a medical evac unit. Just give me-" I grabbed Tammy's arm, and pulled her back down.

"They're just bruises and cuts. Nothing is broken or torn. They're just flesh wounds, Tammy. I'll be alright once we stop the bleeding…" I rocked unstably in place, fighting to maintain my impaired cognitive functions in spite of the blinding pain and rising daze.

Tammy didn't say anything, but she continued her ministrations as I had requested.

This probably wasn't the best way to apologize to her after yesterday's lunchtime fiasco.

"How long have you been bleeding like this?" Tammy asked. My head rolled before I could answer. Tammy caught me before I hit the ground.

"-I'm fine, I'm fine! Just about blacked out again, that's all-"

In retrospect, I guess I wasn't all that 'fine'.

"Just get my legs wrapped… Thank God he missed my femoral arteries…" Tammy didn't waste a second of my life. My pants came off, and the various bruised slashes were bandaged in a matter of minutes.

"...Zane?" Tammy looked around the sloping knoll with a terrified expression on her face.

"...What the hell did you do?"

I fixed my unfocused eyes on the ruined terrain.

"Oh-"

Command was gonna kill me…

"...Whoops?"

The sod covered knoll was devastated by deep gouges and wide scrapes. Huge portions of the earth had been rent and flattened by something colossal. But the gem of destruction that was sure to consume several paperwork filled hours of my life-

"...Well, at least he didn't knock it down…" I murmured.

A section of the Route wall had collapsed. Though technically not a breach, it was a compromise in the Route's defenses. With a heavy sigh, I reached for my radio.

"Command, this is Bastard. Do you copy? Over."

Pause. Then-

"Bastard, this is Command. State the matter of your hail. Over."

Well, better get it over with now…

"We have a structural discrepancy in the eastern side of the Route wall, six klicks south of Pewter City. Habitat P-13. Recommending Hades Deployment ASAP. Send out the heavies, some of the rocks are pretty big. Over."

I was cringing when the radio buzzed with Command's reply.

"How extensive is the damage? Estimated Hades personnel required? Over."

"Five Machokes at least. Probably an Excadrill or two. Only the interior of the wall was affected. Outlying structure is mostly intact. At least a day's duty with coordinated Hades supervision. Over."

-Please don't ask me, please don't ask me-

"Have you ascertained the identity of the vandal responsible? Over."

-Shit.

"...It was myself and Damascus, Command. Just a field exercise gone awry. The situation has been contained. No casualties to report. Over."

Here we go...

"Roger that Bastard. Hades unit has been deployed. Command expects a _detailed_ account of the affair in question by nineteen-hundred-hours today. Failure to meet the deadline will result in martial supervision. Hope it was worth it, Bastard. This is Command, over and out."

Fuck.

"What time is it, Tammy?" I asked nervously.

"Four o'clock in the afternoon." Tammy replied.

"Right. That gives me and Alexandria enough time to at least compile a draft. I need to get back to town, fast." I punctuated the plan by trying to stand up.

I took Tammy to the ground with me when that failed.

"...Okay…" I murmured from below her.

"-I might need a little help." I admitted.

Tammy just laughed.

…

"Is there anyway we can leave out the part where I threw a rock at him?"

"..."

"-Come on, Alexandria, we don't need to tell Command that-"

"..."

"-Quit being a finger pointing prick, and help me figure this out!"

"..."

"He threw my ass up against the wall! What was I supposed to do?"

"..."

"-Illogical response?! Listen here, you stuck up shitty little excuse for a-"

"-Zane, who the hell are you yelling at?" Tammy poked her head into the bathroom.

I had commandeered her private facilities to serve as my personal office space.

"-My Tact. Pad?" I tried.

Tammy's brow furrowed.

"Who is Alexandria?" Tammy asked, folding her arms, and giving me the stinkeye.

I quirked an eyebrow. Tammy's behavior seemed a bit peculiar, given the line of questioning-

-Oh.

 _Are you kidding me?_

Did Tammy really think that Alexandria was another woman?

"Not who you're thinking of." I snorted.

My Tact. Pad had something to say on the matter.

"..."

"Go to hell, Alex."

Tammy crossed the bathroom in a lunge and tore my Tact. Pad out of my fingers.

"Whoa, Tammy! Slow down-"

The Tact. Pad locked her out instantly.

As if it knew what was happening…

"What the hell?! What kind of security programs does this thing have?!" Tammy screamed, gritting her teeth in frustration as the bio-recognition diagnostics effectively killed the device.

I just started laughing.

"Bring it here." I smirked at the scandalized Policewoman when I waved her over. Tammy glared at me, and then reluctantly returned my Tact. Pad.

After my identity had been confirmed via my biological signatures, I popped open the holoport at the top of the device.

"Come on out, Alexandria." I chuckled.

A multi-colored series of beams flashed out of the holoport, and a three dimensional visual representation of Alexandria appeared above Tammy's bathroom sink.

It looked like a featureless magenta and teal rubber ducky with perfectly smooth curves and two oversized and expressionless eyes.

" _-Is that-?!"_ Tammy couldn't finish. She couldn't even get her words past the awe.

No wonder.

Just because of Alexandria, my Tact. Pad was worth even more than Pewter City's marketable real estate gross.

Way more.

"Tammy, this is Alexandria. Alexandria, this is Tammy. Say hi, Alexandria."

 _Beep-boop-clickclick._ Replied Alexandria.

" _...A Porygon?!"_ Tammy could only gape.

"Version Two-point-'O. Codename; Alexandria, one of ACE's little contributions to my mission."

A Porygon2, to be precise.

Which is even more valuable than Damascus and Darwin's combined net worth.

"One of the fifteen original models. His coding is not cut-and-paste linguistic pasta. Completely self-sufficient and photonically corporeal outside of cyberspace due to his core metaphysical tesseract-lattice quantum programming. Don't ask me what the hell any of that means, cause I don't know. This ain't no hacked and replicated flashburn-cycle Porygon-Z. Alexandria is the real McCoy."

 _Beep-boop-whoopwhoop!_ Alexandria did a little dance, spinning his feet and rocking his frame, all while playing corny inspirational music off of my Tact. Pad.

"Cut the static, Alexandria. Nobody likes an attention whore."

 _Wop-wop-whaawp…_ Alexandria produced a series of descending notes to better reflect his crestfallen appearance.

" _-ACE gave you a Porygon?!"_ Tammy found her withheld breath in an explosion of disbelief.

"They didn't give me one, per say. ACE just assigned Alexandria to me as a sort of technical assistant. He's really not that useful at much anything else-"

 _-Wa-wei-we-wai!_ Alexandria cried out in indignation, eyes furrowing and feet pattering in anger.

"-You're fucking useless, you AI sim. You can't even conceive of a means to get my ass out of hot water because you're too concerned with providing an accurate record of events. Command is going to have my head for today's little catastrophe, and YOU'RE going to be the one serving it to them on a gilded platter." I growled.

 _...Wheep-boop…_ Alexandria slumped in depression.

"Zane!" Tammy cried out mid coo, slapping my injured shoulder, apparently ashamed of me for my callous treatment of a fucking computer.

"Oh, come on, Tammy! That's just a personality matrix! Alexandria doesn't feel shit. He just responds to verbal stimulus with empathetic reactions for his operator's sake. Something about promoting altruistic relationships with the operator. It's fucking creepy." I glared at Alexandria, whose only response was to play an audio recording of an old-timey steam-engine whistle, which was punctuated with a nuclear explosion.

-All while portraying a very angry emoticon on his face.

"Like I said, fucking creepy." I never stopped glaring at Alexandria.

The personality matrix selected a miffed expression for Alexandria, and the stupid little computer harrumphed at me.

"Whatever. Get your ass back into the Tact. Pad, and compute a rational excuse for why Damascus was so violently aggressive that _doesn't_ involve me antagonizing him." I clicked the _Rescind_ template on my Tactical Pad, and recalled Alexandria into its quantum hard drive.

"..."

"Yeah, fuck you too, Alexandria." I slid the protective visor over the Tact. Pad's display before the impish little Porygon could get another word in. I shook my head and turned to Tammy.

She was still gaping.

" _...A Porygon?"_ Tammy mouthed. I sighed.

"Yeah. A Porygon." I grumbled. Tammy closed her mouth. Then she swallowed.

"...What is your mission, Zane? High Command and the League approves a Ranger for competitive battling, ACE just hands you a flipping Porygon for personal use, and for all I know; this Damascus could be one of the Sinnoh region's Dragon-Gods, granted to you by the Arceus Theocracy… _What exactly is your mission?_ " Tammy was looking at me with all the fear and incredulity that one would express if I had just provided a logically reinforced mathematical equation that effectively quantified the moon's tectonic layer into a sodium and dairy-fat derived edible medium.

-I let Alexandria phrase the previous line. AIs are absolute Slakoth shit at providing condescending analogies.

I just sighed at Tammy.

She knew this much.

I might as well tell her.

"My mission is to tackle the League and make a public scene deposing the Kanto Gym Leaders, before usurping Lance from his Throne." I reported in a dull tone.

Tammy blinked.

"-Just to save the politicians and the Ranger's some face by becoming a cultural icon that will draw people into the recruiter's office of their own volition. All so that the Central Government doesn't have to reinstate the draft." I slumped under the ridiculous connotations that my explanation inspired.

Tammy sat down on the sink. She could only stare at me with distant eyes.

"-So you're essentially a warmonger's puppet?" Tammy asked. My hand connected with my face in a gesture of shame.

"...That is what I have been led to believe, yes." I answered. There was a long pause.

Then-

"-I can't believe you, Zane…"

I inhaled deeply.

"-I know… It's painted in shades of moral ambiguity, but it's necessary, Tammy…" I murmured.

"...You sound like you're trying to convince yourself of that, not me." Tammy whispered.

No.

It wasn't necessary.

It was just the best solution.

"Tammy-"

"-Shut up, Zane. I don't want to hear anymore." Tammy cut me off, her voice far less frail than my own.

Fair enough.

I didn't want talk about it either.

"-So what now?" Tammy asked, once my silence had been thoroughly observed.

"What do you mean?" I swallowed.

Tammy's watering eyes met mine.

"What are you going to do with me?" Tammy asked fearfully.

I froze.

What was she talking about?

"You just told me the entire gameplan, revealed what I can only assume is Indigo Government secrets, betrayed the agencies involved, clarified that that your apparent mission is just a farce so that some unsavory politicians can secure their reelection platforms… _All within the mic range of an ACE issued Porygon-_ "

-Oh shit.

"Oh FUCK!"

How could I have been so stupid?

Was it the blood loss?

It had never occurred to me that Alexandria could be eavesdropping on my every exchange.

How could I have fucked up so completely and in such an obvious way?

"Tammy, listen to me! They aren't going to hurt you! I promise!" I was desperately begging for her to stop crying, pleading for Tammy to calm down.

But how could I make that promise?'

This was ACE.

And I had just compromised the mission.

My ass was just as liable for a burn notice as Tammy's.

"Tammy, listen-"

"GET OUT!" Tammy shrieked when I drew near.

"TELL THEM THAT I DON'T CARE! TELL ACE THAT I WON'T SAY ANYTHING! TELL THEM THAT I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!"

That stopped me cold.

"Tammy-?"

"GET OUT!" Tammy pushed herself up against the wall.

She was afraid of me.

I had just endangered her life with my naivety.

Tammy had every right to be afraid of me.

I left without another word. I ran as fast as I could. Tammy's cozy house faded away to the crowded Pewter streets.

I had to run.

I had to get away.

But I knew that I couldn't hide from ACE.

-Especially not with one of their Porygons enclosed within my breast pocket.

"-Alexandria!" I pulled open the Tact. Pad's visor.

Alexandria was waiting for me.

' _Maintain position within Pewter City. Do not attempt to leave Pewter City. Any attempt to leave Pewter City will be interpreted as an act of treason.'_

That stopped my running.

"...Alexandria? What is going to happen?"

The machine had become my master.

All at the flip of a switch.

' _Awaiting determination.'_

I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see an ACE hitman sneaking up behind me.

I don't know what I was looking for.

Anybody could be an ACE operative.

And I'd never see them coming until it was too late.

"...Alexandria, what are they going to do with Tammy?"

' _Awaiting determination.'_

"Awaiting determination?! Just give me a straight answer, you piece of shit!" I wound up to fling my Tact. Pad into a building's wall.

An incoming call on my Tact. Pad stopped me.

I checked the caller identity.

 _ACE Central._

Oh shit.

"Ranger Zane Bastard reporting." I answered the hail with a trembling voice.

"You done fucked up, kid." A smug voice on the other end informed me.

"Yeah, about that... Listen-"

"-Nu-uh. You listen." The ACE agent chided me.

I was respectfully silent.

Or terrified silent.

Actually both.

"You were explicitly ordered not discuss the core objective with anyone not already involved with Operation: Wounded Hearts. Actually… As I recall, you were sworn to secrecy on the matter. How the hell did you forget about that? Don't answer. Teenagers think with their fucking balls when they should be using their fucking brains. You've been calling this girl ever since you first arrived in Pewter City, and you slipped to her. _And you were dumb enough to do it in front of Alexandria too._ " The ACE agent actually sounded amused.

That made me feel even more terrified.

"Look, I know it sounds like a cop out, but I'm not thinking clearly right now. Damascus and I-"

"Yes, we know all about your little domestic dispute. Alexandria has already divulged the details to us. I always knew that you Rangers were reckless, but after what happened between you and Damascus? You're fucking suicidal. And breaking your oath of secrecy only proves it. Well done."

I couldn't win.

This guy had my ass up against a wall.

There was no way that I was talking my way out of this one.

"Look, people are going to figure it out! This isn't a secret! This is practically transparent! How is one Police Officer knowing a liability to the mission?!" I was begging, and my tone reflected it.

"Of course people are going to figure it out. We're actually counting on it. But we didn't want them to add it all up until you made a move against the higher caste of the League. That's why your _official_ dossier lists you under the pretense of the 'Wounded Hearts Project'. You're just supposed to be a Ranger learning to cope with your PTSD by competing in the League. It was all part of your cover. And now you just blew it. Somebody outside of Operation: Wounded Hearts knows. And now ACE has to mop up the mess you made."

"Tammy will stay quiet! I swear she'll stay quiet-"

"-I'd be more worried about my own skin if I was you, Ranger. A Police Officer can be sworn to silence. A liability like a boasting Ranger doesn't seem to be able to respect his own oath of silence."

That smugness was poison in my ears.

"-What's going to happen?" I asked in a shaky voice.

"Well… You're being pulled up for reassessment as we speak. A Tribunal is being convened for the proceedings. While in truth, it was a minor and easily repaired breach, your inability to respect your own sworn oath to ACE reflects rather poorly on your credibility. I would advise you to cooperate with ACE in the Tribunal's convention, otherwise-"

"-I got it." I answered in a numb voice. The agent was silent for a moment.

"On a personal advisory… I would also recommend proving your ability to remain an asset to Operation: Wounded Hearts. You have a Gym challenge tomorrow. The outcome of that challenge could heavily influence the Tribunal's verdict. If I were you, Ranger… I would approach that Gym challenge as if my life fucking depended on it."

-Mercy from a Spook.

This world was devolving into madness.

"Count on it." I replied in the firmest voice I could muster. The click of a closed line signaled the end of the call.

I stared at the Tact. Pad in my hands with a cold detachment carving lines into my expression.

"You know what, Alexandria? Fuck you."

 _Budup-bump-bump!_ Alexandria replied with a digital display of a raised middle finger.

I stared at the Tact. Pad in disbelief.

Did the stupid Porygon actually think that this was funny?

...No.

-Of course Alexandria didn't.

That was just the programmed response of a machine's personality matrix.

Alexandria didn't know what 'funny' was.

"Fuck my life." I whimpered, staggering off in search of a decent hotel.

…

Well.

Here we are.

The Pewter City Gym.

Sixteen-hundred-hours.

Just a three kilometer subterranean hike beneath the City walls and under the Hades's Swath to Brock's Pit.

And a possible ACE executioner waiting for me in that tunnel with a black sack and a bottle of Methoxyflurane.

Yep.

This had all the promise of a good day written all over it.

I only needed to provide proof of my identity to the front desk before I was ushered into the Pit's access tunnel.

…

The Pewter City Gym had originally served Pewter as the city's barracks back in the post-Brink Dark Age. Back in the days when the Trainers, Military, and Rangers all served together in the defense of humanity.

Back before the social divisions separated that brotherhood, and the divided pieces became the various social norms in these 'peaceful' days.

Originally, the city militia was just comprised of simple Warriors. When our guns became too dangerous to wield against the mon, we needed a new weapon platform that could meet the mon on their evolutionary terms.

That's how the first Trainers came about.

We used the mon to kill other mon.

A pretty clever solution.

All it took was domestication.

They weren't called Trainers back then. They were just called Guardians. Men and women who fought off all threats using their trained Pokemon.

As time progressed, the roles of the Guardians began to adapt.

Some Guardians manned the city walls, and prepared defenses against the raids perpetrated by other human tribes, in both the interior and exterior of the City walls. They became the Military.

Some Guardians headed off into the Frontier, taking the fight to the mon in their own turf. Setting up their camps in the most dangerous field known, these Guardians gave their all for the purpose of drawing the mon's attention off of the settlements. They became the Rangers.

And some Guardians found a unique role, one that's purpose could easily be underestimated by a rudimentary glossing through a history book. These Guardians became sportsmen.

There's just something awe inspiring about a Pokemon battle...

There's just something about watching a pair of monsters tearing each other apart that appeases the human soul.

Hell, we've been making a sport out of violence since our earliest days. From the Gladiators in the Roman Coliseum, to the UFC Competitors in the Pre-Brink International Cage Matches, humanity has always appreciated violence for its adherence to our primeval origins.

Sports do not really sound all that necessary in a post-apocalyptic scenario, but they were essential for fostering peace in times of hardship.

A distraction from all your woes, a moment outside of your misery, a unity formed by a body of cheering spirits, all of whom share your rabid obsession for violence.

Sports are an intrinsic element of mankind. They let us indulge our animals in a controlled setting so that we can preserve our humanity throughout every other social medium.

And the Guardians of old proved that in their training sessions, whether it was breaking a new mon into service, or enhancing the combat capabilities of an old one…

...Training mon made for one hell of a spectacle.

People flocked to watch mon beat the tar out of one another, all while their Guardians screamed obscenities and death threats for failure at the feral combatants.

Naturally, when an audience forms, they start making demands.

And when the crowd outnumbers the players…

The players cave into the demands.

It was the very first rule of the League:

"Do it for the audience."

Before long, Guardians were being pulled off of 'active duty' just so that they could compete in this new event that the people had dubbed-

-The League.

An event that pitted a Guardian equipped with a maximum of six trained mon against his brothers and their mon.

Guardian versus Guardian.

Monster versus Monster.

As the League progressed through the various stages of violence, the spectators picked out their favorites based mostly off of combat prowess.

And when a favorite rose above all the other favorites in the final event of the League…

...The people called that Guardian "The Champion."

-Just because he was the strongest, most clever, most disciplined, most driven, and most _entertaining_ Guardian the people knew.

This of course, meant that the Champion had influence.

And people who desire power, always collect individuals of influence into their agenda.

Enter the early City Governments, and the first League Throne.

Put a Champion on the Throne, and puppet his mouth into speaking your words.

And the people will listen to their Champion.

And they follow him blindly to whatever end.

That is how the first League started. There has been eight incarnations of the Kanto League in the one-thousand-and-seventy-five years that have passed since its founding. But they all trace their linage back to the early post-Brink Dark Age, and that first Champion. By bureaucratic procedure and due government process, the League and the Central Government eventually went their separate ways.

-But the League has maintained their provincial Throne, throughout the entire post-Brink.

...And as humanity dispersed and expanded…

-So to did the League's influence grow.

...While the Government's power waxed and waned.

In short order, the League promoted stability and expansion, while the Government struggled to find a unifying purpose.

To say that the League controls the Government is pure fantasy.

The League is more of an entertainment syndicate anymore.

-An extremely profitable entertainment syndicate.

And money, and those who have it, will always hold some level of sway over those in Governmental power.

Meaning that the League Throne in the Central Government isn't just traditionally ornamental.

It is still traditionally powerful.

While most of the Champion's sovereign privileges have been stripped away by due process of Governmental development, the Champion still holds a powerful and unique right.

The veto.

It's the one authority that the Central Government has never been able to wrestle from the League's mighty clutches.

The Champion can effectively force any bill proposed by the Senate Councillors back to square one by simply giving it the thumbs down.

One veto per bill.

-But if the articles of the bill changes in the revaluation of the Senate…

It's considered a new bill, and the Champion can veto the entire address all over again.

Which effectively allows the League to halt all Governmental progress until it conforms to their interests.

That is a lot of firepower for an entertainment syndicate.

And the League has not been stupid with their abuse of it.

They've always found some way of garnering public favor for the use of their veto.

They know how to win the hearts and minds of mankind far more effectively than a politician.

Which is one of the reasons why the League has grown so powerful. So powerful, in fact, that the League effectively ended the Kanto-Johto war thirty years past by simple use of public empathy.

And then they moved their Throne right into the newly formed Confederacy Congress.

Making them all the more powerful.

And all the while, the people of Kanto and Johto cheered the League on-

-Every ambitious and power-mongering step of the way.

No wonder why the the League Champion is considered a Hero.

The Champion is the figurehead of the League.

The Champion is the symbol of the League's commitment to the people and their money.

...And just as he was back in the early days of the post-Brink Dark Age-

 _-He is still the people's Champion._

…

The access tunnel to the Pit was originally dug for the use of the Ranger-Guardians. A quick and secure means of moving from the City and into the Frontier. But when the first League formed in Pewter City…

The access tunnel was connected to a new architectural design in the post-Brink era.

The Pit.

The very first Kanto League Coliseum.

Due to the dangerous powers of some mon, the early Pokemon Battles had to move out of the City walls. The most logical location for such erratic and destructive battles was the Frontier, but civilians couldn't very well traverse the Frontier safely to the training grounds.

That's when some smart motherfucking Guardian with a team of Onixia just went ahead and dug out the early foundations of the Pit.

He was executed for damaging the vital city access tunnel, but the impression he and his rock-snakes left did not go unused for very long.

The Pit proved to be a cleverly designed Training center.

Eighty meters deep, and almost a full two kilometers in circumference, the early Pit offered the Guardians an outlying secure facility that was connected to the city via the old access tunnel for breaking and rearing their mon.

Hence the origins of the title:

Pokemon Gym.

It wasn't long before civilians started using the access tunnel to watch the Guardians at work.

And it wasn't long after the civilians started arriving, that the League was hosted within the Pit.

Modifications were made, naturally. Several layers of tunnels were carved into the sheer walls, so as to offer enclosed seats to paying spectators and the League Guardian participants.

And the sport grew into a mighty syndicate.

But the League Pit remained unchanged, simply because of tradition.

Right up until five-hundred years ago, when the League moved their headquarters out of Pewter and into the newly formed Governmental providence of Indigo.

A new, larger, more elaborate coliseum was constructed-

-And the Pit seemed doomed to become an unused historical icon.

Or it would have, if not for the Pewter City Gym Leaders desiring a choice cut of real estate for their Gym challenges, that is.

Thanks to the conservatively minded people of Pewter, the Pit still adheres to its original function.

It is the home of the Pewter City Gym Leader's mon, and the center stage for all his exhibition matches.

Living history, if you will.

If I ever become a Gym Leader, the very first city that I'd choose to serve as my base of operations would predictably be-

-Cinnabar, cause the island women there are _smoking hot._

...But Pewter would come close second, just because of the wealth of history contained within its walls.

I tried to entertain such ruminating thoughts on my journey to the Pit. I tried to distract myself with the historical appeal.

But I still peered deeply into every shadow, and eyed the flickering lights nervously.

If ACE had decided to ice my ass, this tunnel would be the prime locale for an execution.

A series of iron gates blocked off the various interconnected tunnels to the Pit Channel.

Those tunnels had once been used by the early Rangers to circumnavigate mon attacking the city walls, and lead forays directly into the mon's flanks.

Those tunnels could be utilized to drag my corpse out into the Frontier, leaving no witnesses any the wiser.

Yeah.

 _I was feeling pretty exposed in that tunnel._

It wasn't until I saw the light at the end of the Pit Channel that I dared hope to see the sky again.

I left the access tunnel in a nervous panting, arms and legs quivering in the Pit's Entry Chamber.

Thank God, I was alone.

A sudden cheer sounded from above me, and I could hear human voices shouting out with unrestrained enthusiasm.

I could see the Pit from where I was standing, past an arched porticos that connected the access tunnel to the Pit. The red sandstone walls of the Pit filled the scope of my vision beyond the porticos with the ancient structure's deepest foundations.

Another cheer sounded, and I turned to a staircase, carved out of the red sandstone itself.

And then I took those stairs under heel, and proceeded up to a later renovation of the Pit.

The Loft.

The highest seats in the Pit.

Traditionally reserved for the League Challengers.

I opened the age-old wooden door, and stepped into a sunlit minor amphitheatre.

Two faces looked up at me from the benches.

One was a girl much younger than me, attempting to appear older than she was by prodigious use of makeup and feminine enhancing accessories.

The other, a man at least a decade older than me, was wearing a peacoat and a few day's unkempt stubble on his jaw.

"Take a seat, Ranger! They're almost done!" The peacoat waved me over with an amiable gesture. The girl just ogled at the handsome uniformed Ranger who had barged unceremoniously into the Loft.

Sorry, lass.

No can do.

I like my woman with matured breasts.

"So what brings a Ranger to the Loft?" The peacoat asked me as I sat down on the bench behind him and the lass.

"What do you think?" I grunted, displaying my typical ire for conversation.

"...Well unless there's a Beedrill swarm about to descend upon the Pit, I can't really think of any other reason." The peacoat chuckled.

"I'm here for the same reason that you came to the Loft for." I answered calmly.

The peacoat whipped around.

"-You're joking."

"Nope."

Now the lass was turning from the match in the Pit, curious as to the line of conversation.

"How?" The peacoat asked, jaw hanging loose in surprise.

"Watch." I answered, nodding to the Pit.

There was a match currently in session. Judging from the participants, it was a Novice's challenge.

A tiny Meowth was running circles around a perfectly stationary Geodude.

The Geodude wasn't wasting any effort in pursuing the agile Meowth.

There was practically nothing that a Meowth could do to the rock-hard gray carapace of the Geodude.

By waiting the Meowth out, the Geodude could easily weather any feline attacks, and then launch his assault when the Meowth was exhausted from the futile battery.

A look at the Battle Screen provided me with the opposing Trainer's identities.

Brock, of course, was the home field Champion.

And his opponent was none other than a twelve-year old ginger, battling under a minor's License, and he was far too prone to fist-pumping for no apparent reason whatsofuckingever.

The look on the kid's face seemed to suggest that he was feeling grossly over confident.

Maybe he had a strategy-

"It's nice to see that he's got such spirit, but two mon down and we haven't seen a hint of brains."

The peacoat affirmed my original suspicion.

The ginger didn't have a fucking clue what he was doing.

"I did even better than he did! I actually took out Brock's Geodude!" The lass piped up, fluttering eyes at me, looking for some reaction.

"Shit. Just a Geodude? Couldn't handle the Roggenrola? What a bitch."

I just tell it like it is.

Now stop having creepy fantasies about me.

You ain't old enough for that.

The peacoat burst out laughing.

"You did pretty well though. I was surprised that your Bellsprout had enough power to constrict Brock's Geodude into submission. But watching your attempt at beating Brock's Roggenrola with your Magby wasn't so inspiring…" The peacoat offered some condolences to the crestfallen lass, but followed it up with some well founded criticism.

"Well, it was my last mon… I had to do something…" The lass moped.

"You could have tried superheating the Roggenrola's carapace, then following it up with a precision strike. Roggenrola's don't have much surface area. You might have been able to crack the carapace using a mix of thermal shock and impact." The peacoat elaborated. I looked at him with a touch of admiration.

That was originally what I had planned on using Cortez for…

"Are you an Analyst?" I asked the peacoat. He snorted.

"I guess you could call me that. There was a time when my career choice seemed laughable. But then Enzo Davinci figured out how to make billions in the field." The peacoat replied.

"Well, Chimera Industries pioneered the competitive breeding scene too. Enzo's mon are common fare in the League finals. I'd love to have just one of Enzo's Dratinis…" The lass whispered in a voice of breathy longing.

Both me and the peacoat just laughed.

-But for different reasons.

"-You'd need a millionaire's fortune just to be able to afford a Chimera Dratini, not to mention the Dragon's-"

"-That Dragon would eat you alive, starting from your asshole and chewing its way up to your soft little throat-"

Both me and the peacoat stopped midstream, and looked at one another grinning.

"-That too."

We both said it at the same damn time.

I found myself liking mister peacoat.

He really wasn't all that bad, but given that he was an Analyst…

Peacoat knew a damn sight more about mon than your average Trainer.

"So are you up next?" I asked the peacoat. Peacoat was silent as he casually unbuttoned his coat, and flung his right side vest-wing wide.

Four Gym Badges were pinned to the inside of his coat's right breast wing.

One of them was the Boulder Badge.

"Well hot damn. You already took down Brock and three other Gym Leaders. One more Badge to go before you hit Major rank?" I asked. The peacoat buttoned up his apparel.

"Actually, I beat Brock in a Major rank challenge. Per request." The peacoat smirked.

"Nicely done." I gave him of my rare impressed smiles.

I could respect a man with balls.

Especially one who isn't afraid to gloat about it.

"So what rank are you?" The peacoat asked me. I snorted.

"Novice. They don't even give me the option for requesting an Intermediate challenge." I grunted. The peacoat laughed again.

"You'll get the Challenger's Rights eventually. Everybody has to start off small. Even Rangers." The peacoat approved of my spunk, but his reasoning fell on deaf ears.

"We'll see about that." I smiled. The peacoat cocked an eyebrow.

"Got something special planned?" The lass asked, finally getting over the skulking fit that she had been entertaining ever since the peacoat and I had expressed our opinions regarding the likelihood of her ever possessing a Chimera Dratini.

"Maybe. I'll give you just one hint. My challenge isn't restricted." I answered.

The peacoat let loose an impressed whistle.

"That's ballsy. Gonna risk losing your mon so that you can pull off some unorthodox strategy?" The peacoat asked.

"Wait and see." I grinned. The peacoat chuckled, and turned back to the field.

"Well you're challenger number four of five. We haven't seen number five yet. Were you the one that requested a private match?" The peacoat asked.

I shook my head.

"Was it anyone else here?" I asked.

"It wasn't me, and it obviously wasn't number three. Otherwise they would have declared lockout before his match." The lass said.

"It most certainly wasn't me. I don't have the money or influence required to request a private Gym challenge. We're probably going to be forced into spectating some rich kid's Novice ranked battle. Maybe he'll have your Chimera Dratini, gal." The peacoat teased the lass.

"Well, you've got yourself a half-an-hour to go before curfew. You leave now, you might make it to the Pewter Gym lobby before closed doors." I pointed out. The peacoat shook his head vehemently.

"Are you kidding me? I watch these matches hoping to learn something. I beat Brock today at his Gym in a Major ranked battle, but if I actually make it to the Indigo League finals this year… I might have to square off against Brock's Championship team. In unrestricted format. I need to know everything I can about Brock and his strategies, if I want so much as a prayer against him in the League finals."

The peacoat was most definitely an Analyst.

Desperate for every scrap of information possible regarding his opponents.

...And willing to sit through tedious Novice matches in order to sate that appetite for knowledge.

That's why most people laughed at the Analysts.

It just looked like a waste of time.

But anyone in the service can sympathize with an Analyst's goals and commitments.

Information provided by both the Military and the Ranger Analysts have saved countless lives before.

If the Ranger's equivalent of a PKMN Trainer Analyst could do that…

...Then who am I to judge the Trainer version?

"So how far does your education go?" I asked the peacoat. He chuckled again.

"I've only been competing in the League for three years now. But I've been studying League strategy and plotting international training trends since I was thirteen. You could say that I didn't start scrapping until I had all my eggs in a row." The peacoat shrugged.

"That sounds boring. The Rangers taught me the hard way. Taking orders to scrap first, and then taking orders to study second. But then I made Warrant Officer, and now I'm supposed to study first, and then give orders to kill mon second. Just comes with the position of Command, I suppose." I was being surprisingly open with the peacoat regarding my history.

It must have had something to do with me fearing for my life…

I didn't want to think about ACE, and these conversations were a brilliant distraction from my predicament.

"Warrant Officer?! Chief or Petty?" The peacoat surprised me with his knowledge of Ranger ranks.

"Chief Warrant Officer Zane Bastard." I replied with a grin, pointing to the double-block insignia on my shoulder.

"-At _your_ age?!"

"-Your last name is _Bastard?!_ "

Both the lass and the peacoat walked all over each other with their personalized shouts of disbelief.

"Yes, Chief Warrant Officer at seventeen. I'm gunning for Lieutenant-Captain before eighteen." I chose to answer the peacoat's question.

The lass's question wasn't all that important.

"Then what are you doing with a Novice ranked Licence?" The peacoat shook his head in awe.

"Been asking myself that same question." I chuckled.

"So you have Frontier experience?" The peacoat asked. I felt my smirk getting bigger.

"Enough to qualify as a Veteran. Why do you think I requested unrestricted? It's what I'm used to." I replied. The peacoat and lass exchanged a wide eyed look.

"Are your G.I. mon registered in the League?" The peacoat asked me.

Well…

-I don't know if I'd say that...

"Yep. You were pining for a Chimera Dratini, girl? Guess what?" I looked over at the Lass with a smarmy expression plastered on my face.

"Two of my mon come from Chimera Industry's Waterloo division. The other two mon come from Hell."

Oh, shit _yeah_ -

-Try that piece of pie out.

And I'm gonna be smug about serving it too.

"Fucking Rangers and their fucking G.I. mon! Well, actually… Come to think of it, you've earned it by putting on that beret. Thank you for your service, Chief Warrant Officer Bastard."

Peacoat knew how to get into my good graces quickly. He even offered me a legitimate salute.

I was happy to return it.

"At ease, Four-Badges. You're not in uniform." I joked about martial etiquette with the peacoat.

Regardless of whether he understood the implication or not, the peacoat still laughed about it.

"Oh-! Brock is finally making a move!" The lass went into a tizzy over the event in the Pit.

We all focused our attention on the Pit.

Both me and the peacoat silently agreed about Brock's move.

It weren't nothing special.

Brock's Geodude hefted a decent sized rock off the sandy floor of the Pit-

-And then flung it right at the panting Meowth's head.

No prizes for guessing correctly at what happened next.

Gym challenge over.

Brock: 3

Ginger: 0

Fucking pathetic.

"Well, Ranger… It looks like you're up next." The peacoat smiled. I snorted.

"So what do I do, head on down now?" I asked. The peacoat shook his head.

"No, they'll call challenger number four when it's time. Brock needs to reorganize his Novice team for a fresh match. He only has like thirty Geodudes…" The Peacoat chuckled.

"Damn. Anything I should know about the ginger?" I asked, watching the kid shake hands with Brock, before he turned around and left the Pit. Presumably on his way to the Loft.

"He's annoying." The lass scowled. The peacoat laughed again.

"He's just naive and exuberant. Get's fired up real easily, so don't engage him in any aggressive conversation. Half the shit that comes out of his mouth is nonsense, and the other half is ego." The peacoat filled me in.

Shit.

That ginger sounded a lot like me.

We probably weren't gonna get along.

"Well fuck me. There goes the neighborhood." I chuckled upon hearing a rapid pattering of footfalls on the Loft's stairs.

The door was flung open, and a meter tall redheaded nothing dashed right in, mouth already flapping.

"That was such bullshit! How is a Meowth supposed to beat a fucking Geodude! Tibbles gave it his best shot, and all Brock had to say about it was, ' _Come back when you're ready!'_ Who the hell does he think he is!?"

Yep.

Ginger was already rubbing me the wrong way.

"Brock Aissatou, the fucking Pewter City Gym Leader?" I offered the ginger an answer in deadpan.

The ginger just froze on sight of me.

I heard the peacoat's palm connect with his face at high velocity.

Yeah.

I answer bullshit with bullshit.

Get over it.

"What's a Ranger doing here?! The Loft is for challengers only!"

"-He is a challenger. Now just sit down and chill. You're still running on a battle high." The peacoat answered the ginger before I could make a sarcastic reply.

Way to cockblock my fun, Four-Badges.

"I couldn't crack Brock's Geodude… All three of my mon came up short." The ginger moped when he sat down between the lass and the peacoat.

"Well to be perfectly fair, your lineup was poorly designed for fighting Rock-Types. A Pidgey, a Kakuna, and a Meowth? Not one of your mon had a hope in hell of getting through a Rock-Type's carapace. You have to bring the right mon for the right fight if you want to beat a Gym Leader." The peacoat patiently explained to the ginger. I just laughed.

"A Kakuna? Against a Geodude? Did Brock equip his rock with a flyswatter just to drive the point home?"

Look, I'm a Ranger.

We punish idiocy with belittling so people stop being idiots.

All because the mon punish idiocy with evisceration.

Belittling saves lives, and don't you forget it.

"Well… It was a highly questionable match-up, but I don't think that I'd jump to that extreme…"

Four-Badges was trying to defuse a redheaded bomb before I could even set the charge.

A fucking ying to my yang.

My respect went up another notch for good 'ol peacoat.

"The thing is, kid, you need more variety on your team. A Persian could potentially trump a Geodude, and a Pidgeotto could definitely give Brock's Novice team issues, but… What were you going to do against an Onix? Even if your three mon were fully evolved, they'd have their hands full trying to drop a Gym Leader's Onix. You need some color on your team. Unless you're trying to design a mono team for the League's specialist consideration, I'd suggest a mon with bulk and power. If you get yourself a Nidoking-"

"-Scratch that, peacoat. The kid wants a Nidoqueen. Not as fast or as strong as a Nidoking, but they are a whole hell of a lot less temperamental. And they can stomach a lot more abuse than the males." I threw in my half-Sandz. The peacoat gave it some thought.

"Actually, given how nimble the rest of your team is, I think that the Ranger is right. A Nidoqueen would offer even better synergy with your lineup than a Nidoking would. But you'd still want a sweeper of some sort, and nothing you currently have qualifies..."

"Well, sticking with his indigenous Viridian-Pewter district theme… How about a Scyther? They can move fast and hit hard. And if you can get them right out of the egg with an offering of honey and butter, a Scyther will probably throw in a lifetime supply of BJs for you and your entire family as well." I said it with a cheesy smile. The peacoat covered his mouth against a chuckle.

He still had scruples about discussing anything sexually orientated in front of children, but he was too good natured and too humorous to not laugh at my crude joke.

"A Scyther? Wouldn't a Tauros be a better pick?" The peacoat countered. I shrugged.

"Tauros start off pretty solid, but when it comes to easy picking sweepers? You just can't beat a Scyther. Just go to Viridian Forest during their mating season, bribe a Walkout to secure you a big egg, and within a month, you'll be nursing a scary fucking Scyther for a pittance. That, and a Scyther's got adrenaline glands the size of melons. They get pumped up with one of their bladed courtship dances, and a Tauros ain't got shit on a Scyther. Aim for a female. They get bigger and meaner than the males."

It was then I realized that I was handing out training advice to a rookie Trainer.

What was I thinking, telling him to bribe a Walkout for a Scyther egg?

I could get him killed!

-Or incarcerated...

"Honey and butter?" The ginger asked me, clearly interested.

Both the lass and the peacoat were looking at me pretty curiously as well.

I swallowed.

"Old Ranger trick. The sugar and fat overwhelms a Scyther's metabolism. They get sluggish and dopey, making them that much easier to domesticate. That, and Scythers get pretty partial to whomever brings them the sweet stuff." I answered.

"They're still aggressive as fuck though, so use a firm fucking hand whenever they get angsty. Otherwise your Scyther will sharpen its blades on your spinal column." I added that warning, praying that the kid would forget about my sweeper suggestion.

Instead-

"How much would it cost to bribe a Ranger for a Scyther egg?"

 _The fricken lass asked me that question._

She wanted a murderous giant fucking praying mantis as well?

Where did I go wrong?

"...Five Sandz at least. Anything over eight Sandz and you're getting jipped. Check the chorion for a yellow zigzag pattern on the seam. That's how you'll know that you're getting a female." I answered reluctantly.

The peacoat's eyebrows damn near met his hairline.

"Eight Sandz for a female Scyther egg? That's the bargain of the century! I've seen freshly caught feral Scythers going for four-hundred-and-fifty Sandz in auctions before! And an egg for only eight?" The peacoat was beside himself with this trade secret.

"That's why you have to bribe. It's easy as hell to smuggle an egg out of the reserves, but it's damn near a capital offense for a Ranger to traffic in feral mon, or their offspring. If you do get yourself a Scyther egg, just say that you found it glued to a Route tree. Otherwise, the Rangers will come looking to bag the mon that they missed. And don't even think about trying to make a business out of bribing Rangers. It ain't all that hard to track rare mon across the blackmarket. You start selling juvenile Scythers to shady dealers, your ass is gonna wind up with a visit from the local Police. Just get one for personal use, and never mention how you got it." I was hissing in a whisper.

"I am so getting me a Scyther now…" The ginger grinned.

"-Get in line." The lass giggled.

Oh, fuck me.

I was supposed to be recruiting Trainers into the Ranger Corps…

...Not advising Trainers on how to use the Rangers for securing dangerous mon…

-And Alexandria had probably just recorded the entire affair.

I was a dead man.

"Trainers of the Loft, be aware. We are initiating lockout procedures. Any individuals wishing to depart before our two final challenges should accompany the recording staff back to the Pewter Gym. I repeat, this is your last chance to depart before the final two challenges are completed. Proceed to the entry hall if you wish to leave now." The PA system echoed across the Pit, and Brock headed off to prep his fresh Novice team. A small group of the Pewter City Gym staff were pouring into the Pit, stripping cables and cameras out from their roosts.

"Well, I want to see what the Ranger is planning." Peacoat shot me a smirk.

"I'm sticking around. I want to see his G.I. mon in action." The lass cooed.

"I don't have anything better to do. I mean, it isn't the Scyther's mating season yet, is it?" The ginger asked me.

"Give it four more months." I grunted. The kid looked flabbergasted that he was going to have to wait four whole months just to break the law and get his Scyther.

Maybe he'd forget about it and move on in that time.

Though he probably wouldn't…

"Final call. The last group is leaving now. If any former challengers wish to depart before the conclusion of the fifth match, this is your last chance." The PA system blared out again.

"Man, they're laying it on pretty thick. Is it always like this?" I asked the peacoat. He started for a moment, a pensive look crossing his face.

"Actually… no. They genuinely sound like they want us to leave…" The peacoat mused.

"Well they can't make us. The daily challenger's privilege, remember? We can even watch the private matches, just so long as we don't record them." The lass threw in.

"Why does the League give us that privilege?" The ginger asked, curious.

"-For the League Analysts-"

Both me and the peacoat were saying the same damn thing at same damn time.

Again.

If we kept it up, people were gonna think that we were an item.

Too bad his boobs weren't big enough to satisfy my needlessly epicurean tastes.

And his genitalia wasn't inverted internally.

And his facial hair was hideous.

-I could go on…

"Challenger number four, please report to the Challenger's Block in the Pit. Your match with Gym Leader Brock is scheduled to commence in ten minutes. Challenger number four, please report to the Pit." The PA system summoned me for my match against Brock. I sighed and rose from my bench.

"Good luck!" The lass bade, blowing me a kiss.

No, kid.

I ain't into you.

Come back in three years when you don't need to stuff your bra.

"Better offer that luck to Brock. This Ranger is running on crude spite." I smiled, heading off to the Loft's door.

I just about made it too.

Yep.

That's when I felt a familiar and disturbing presence.

 _And I heard his designer shoes slowly clicking their way up the Loft stairs._

"-Oh, not you…"

Cold. Aching. Burning. Drowning. Unworthy.

 _Terrified_.

The Ghosts were getting closer.

Everybody in the Loft went quiet.

 _We could feel him coming._

Challenger number five of five.

My old 'friend' from Viridian City's shuttle terminal.

 _Mister Crypt._

My hand was frozen stiff less than half a meter away from the Loft's doorknob.

Those slow, clicking footsteps stopped just short of the Loft door's opposite side.

I couldn't move.

I couldn't even breath.

I could only wait for him or his spirits to open the door...

-But nothing of the sort happened.

 _He was just waiting there…_

He knew that I was on the other side.

-Was he waiting for me to do something-?

 _...Or was he just trying to freak me out?_

I heard the grinding of leather heals on sandstone.

He was getting impatient.

My hand finally found animation in dread…

I grasped the handle of the door…

...And then I pulled it open, and stood aside.

Mister Crypt sauntered right on in without even glancing at the Ranger who had just served him as a commissionaire.

He was still wearing his fashionably black funerary garb.

Being that close to him and his revenants…

-I could feel my bowels loosening.

It wasn't until he had taken a dignified seat on the rearmost bench of the Loft that I realized…

 _He'd hidden those fucked-up eyes of his with those fancy fucking expensive shades._

Not that I cared too much about that right now.

-I needed to figure out how to walk again…

"Challenger number four-"

-I jumped out of my skin, and so did every other pale face in the Loft when the PA system called for me once more.

Well, almost everybody jumped…

...Except of course, our Mister Crypt.

"-Please report to the Challenger's Block immediately. The final preparations for your match are being made now."

With a quivering intake of breath, I moved one foot out of the Loft's doorway, and followed it with another. Then I closed the Loft door behind me…

...And I shamelessly fled the Ghosts in panic as I hastily descended down the Loft stairs.

…

Brock Aissatou.

The Pewter City Gym Leader.

 _ACE Hitmen are coming for you…_

-Don't think about that…

 _Mister Crypt, watching you from up in the Loft…_

-Definitely don't think about that.

 _Unrestricted format. Vauban dying…_

-Brain? Are you just trying to make me cry?

 _Your crazy, stupid, reckless, career jeopardizing strategy…_

-Focus on Brock now. Come on, focus…

 _You can feel those creepy eyes of his, looking down at you from the Loft, can't you?_

-Brock. Gym Leader Brock. That is the only thing I need to worry about right now.

 _Failure._

-That too.

 _You are so dead._

-Optimism damnit! Give me some fucking optimism!

 _This could work…_

-Yeah?

... _If reality wasn't a thing._

-Fuck you too, brain.

 _Gym Leader Brock…_

-Thank you, for finally getting your fucking priorities straightened out.

Brock Aissatou, the Pewter City Gym Leader, stood but ten rapidly closing meters away from me. I had just managed to my get giddy nerves and addled brain under control again, when Brock extended a hand to me in greeting.

"Ranger Zane Bastard." The twenty-four year old Gym Leader had a voice just as gravelly as the skin of his preferred species-Type of mon.

"Gym Leader Brock Aissatou." I shook his offered hand firmly.

"This is your first Gym Challenge, isn't it?" Brock asked as we released each other from a bone-breaking handshake.

"Affirmative." I grunted. Brock smiled.

"Well I've been through the League finals three times now, and I'm hoping that my Championship experience has prepared me for this. This is my first time fighting a Ranger. Go easy on me, would you?" Brock spoke in a hoarse drawl, not all that dissimilar from Colonel Isaac Howes's.

Except that Colonel Isaac Howes knows what enunciation means.

"Hell no. I ain't cutting you any slack, Gym Leader. You're gonna get to see how a Ranger fights today."

I answer shit-talk with shit-talk.

The definitive language of sportsmen and servicemen alike.

Brock was laughing.

He approved of my adherence to the laws of manliness.

"Looking forward to it, Ranger. By the way, seeing as this is your first official League match, I thought that I'd offer you a small token of mercy." Brock stepped back.

I was all amused ears.

"I'll give you this one chance to rescind your unrestricted format request. There's no point in losing your mon, Ranger. Take it slow in the League, and don't get too ambitious. Otherwise, we tend to lose the things that we'd rather keep."

Brock was talking down to me about risks and sacrifices?

I could school him in matters such as these.

"I thought that I already said it, Gym Leader. I'm treating you to spectacle from the Corps. Don't ask me to rain on my own parade."

Enter one dangerous Ranger grin.

Brock's face hardened.

"Are you sure that you're willing to go through with this? I won't be holding back, Ranger." Brock warned.

I snickered.

"Neither will I, Gym Leader." I smirked in his cold face.

Brock loosened up, and then shrugged.

"Your funeral, Ranger."

And with those parting words, Brock Aissatou turned around, and slowly stalked off to his ledge.

Brock Aissatou was a pretty big guy. No where near as big as Vermilion City's Gym Leader, Lieutenant Surge, but Brock was definitely number two in the mass category when it came to the Kanto League Gym Leaders.

Lieutenant Surge is a freak of nature. He's closer to three meters tall than he is to two meters tall. And ol' Surge has a shoulder span wider than I am long.

Brock may not have been built like a soda machine on steroids, but at least Lieutenant Surge wore a shirt.

And a clean pair of pants.

Brock was only wearing a baggy pair of sutra pants, which were coated with mud, and held to his waist by a length of braided rope.

No shoes.

No shirt.

No shame.

It had something to do with Gym Leaders and their trademarks.

I suppose that Brock just wanted to show off that impressive physique of his.

Now, I'm fucking cut up like a serviceman. I got me plenty of bulk, but it's all in proportion to my frame. I'm not the stockiest or the tallest human being in Kanto, but I'm noticeably above average in both dimensions.

Brock looked like a stupidly tall, gangly framed motherfucker who had decided to start pumping the iron late in life.

Brock's muscle mass was far from being proportional to his frame. I doubted that he could cross both arms across his chest, and still manage to touch his shoulders with his fingertips.

Brock had focused entirely on beefing up and toning out, neglecting the development of the ligaments that would allow him to make more efficient use of that mass.

But Brock was one big, bronze-skinned, almost-naked, slant-eyed, famous as hell motherfucker.

And I was just a crippled Ranger with a gauze headwrap beneath my beret, flouncing my tough guy speech at him.

Brock had me pegged for a poseur.

I had him chalked up as a meathead.

And funny enough…

-I think that we both liked each other.

...At least for the first fifteen minutes of our match.

Then I kinda fucked up my chance at nurturing a healthy relationship with Pewter City's famous Gym Leader.

What's that old saying?

Something along the lines of-

" _Friendships are the cost of ambition?"_

-I think that's the one.

Either way, I was living by that archaic wisdom.

Literally.

I couldn't afford to lose.

ACE could very well be preparing to straight up ice my ass and dust my dick in the likely event that I was unable to defeat Brock.

I was prepared to fight as dirty as I possibly could in order to live.

Fuck friendship.

My life was on the line.

Just like it had been so many times before, back in the S-ranks of the Ranger Corps.

In a way, ACE's none too subtle death threat had put me in the perfect state of mind for a battle.

-Now I just had to remember not to draw my knife and rush into an engagement at my mon's side.

...And I can tell you this-

-That disciplined clandestine urge was a lot harder to repress than it sounds.

…

The Battle Screen lit up in the Pit. The first image to hit the feed was the Indigo League crest. One dramatic flash and thunderclap later, my pretty mug was displayed on my Trainer's Licence, as well as a list of my League credentials.

Other than that handsome relief of my masculine facial features, there wasn't much to look at on the Battle Screen.

Just a green rimmed Novice License, and and a grand total of five prior Trainer challenges recorded by the Trainer's Eyes.

My victories were displayed with a paltry number five.

-And my losses were displayed with a nice round zero.

Even with a flawless ratio, five League certified victories amounted to absolute shit.

Especially given that this was a Gym challenge.

To say that my League credentials appeared amatuer would have been a compliment.

I looked woefully unprepared for this confrontation.

But my Trainer's License didn't reveal my records in the Ranger Corps.

Otherwise, I wouldn't be fighting Brock in a Novice ranked battle.

My stunning and panty-moistening portrait was pushed to the right side of the Battle Screen, as Gym Leader Brock Aissatou's Trainer License took the spotlight.

It looked ridiculously unfair putting that License next to mine.

Rimmed in platinum, befitting Brock's status as a League Finalist.

And his two Flames lit up in the upper right corner of his Licence.

Brock had defeated eight Gym Leaders to secure his right as an Indigo League challenger.

He had to conquer the Victory Road Trial, just to take a swing at the qualifying rounds of the Indigo League Seasonal Finals.

Brock had to crush another qualifying competitor, just to earn that platinum rim, before Brock could finally enter the real war at Indigo.

Squaring off against the other League Finalists, Brock made the quota victor rank twice, wiping out two members of Elite Four in the process; which earned Brock his Duo-Flame decoration…

...And then Koga Kurosawa came along and molested Brock's rock-hard ass out of the third quota victor position.

That was Brock's curtain call in last year's 1,074th Indigo League Seasonal Finals.

He returned to Pewter City after the post-finals to resume his duties as the Pewter City Gym Leader.

And Koga Kurosawa, along with Giovanni Delimonto, claimed both the third and the fourth quota victor titles…

-Before the two Quad-Flame Gym Leaders entered an accord, rather than duke it out for the chance to challenge Lance.

Giovanni disappointed his fan base yet again, and opted to drop out of the League Seasonal Finals and return to his station as Viridian City's Gym Leader, without challenging Lance for the Throne.

And Koga empowered the Kurosawa ninja clan when he booted Karen Crawley's ass off of the Elite Four and onto the curb, before assuming her role and title as one of the strongest Trainers recognised by the Indigo League, and then followed it all up by naming his daughter Janine as his Fuchsia City Gym Leader successor.

Of course, Giovanni and Koga had themselves an exhibition match before the closing ceremonies. Koga took out four of Giovanni's Championship mon with his signature poisoning antics…

...Before stone cold Giovanni mopped the League ring with all six of Koga's Championship mon.

There is a reason for why so many people want to see Giovanni Delimonto challenge good'ol Lance Drakengard for the League Throne.

There is a reason for why so many people call Giovanni Delimonto ' _The Terra King,'_ despite his brow never having been crested by the League Champion's crown.

Everybody wants to see the Dragon King fall.

And the commonly accepted thesis states thusly-

-That Giovanni Delimonto is currently the only Trainer in the Indigo League Registry who has a chance in hell of bringing Lance's sovereign ass down.

It is speculated by the League Analysts that there are currently only three Trainers in the Indigo League Registry that have the potential to usurp Lance from the Throne.

First, there's Giovanni Delimonto, the only actively competitive Throne-contender in the League Registry. But despite having secured the opportunity to challenge Lance for the Throne in the last six League Seasonal Finals, Giovanni has repeatedly stepped away from that contest.

Then there's Enzo Davinci, whose League legacy is borderline scandalous. He dropped out of the scene originally to build his mon-marketing-empire, Chimera Industries. And he's just too busy being fucking crazy to ever consider competing in the League again.

And the final name on the Throne-contender list is a former League Champion himself, a generation removed from Lance's succession.

Samuel Oak, ' _The Sage King,'_ who stands alone amongst the Indigo League Champions as the only Champion to have ever retired from the League Throne before death or succession takes them.

Old Oak is still technically an undefeated Champion, but good luck getting him to compete in the League again.

The kindly scientist doesn't exactly see eye to eye with the League hierarchy.

And neither faction wants anything to do with the other's policies anymore.

From those three names, not one desires the League Throne. High Command and ACE want me to add a fourth name to the Throne-contender's list, and push that name into challenging the Reigning Champion Lance for the League Throne.

That name?

-Ranger Zane Bastard.

Or as I envision myself,

' _The Bastard King.'_

Yep.

Ambition.

I was born with it, and I'll likely die from it.

Speaking of which…

I need to humiliate a certain Pewter City Gym Leader in a certified League Gym challenge before I can even entertain the thought of planting my ass on that League Throne…

…

"Well, Ranger… You should know what my Novice team's lead is." Brock grunted from across the field. Brock was answering to the League Codes regarding Gym Leaders and their challengers.

As the home field Champion, Brock was code-bound to reveal his first mon to the challenger, giving his opponent the advantage species identification.

Of course I knew what Brock's Novice lead was.

It was always the same damn thing.

A fucking ugly Geodude.

Brock sent his lead out to the field. The Gym Leader's body language was displaying all the enthusiasm of embracing a routine.

"Number Seventeen, give the Ranger a salute!" Brock hollered to his numerically-identified Geodude, who responded to Brock's request by raising both middle digits at me.

...Just for that-

-I want me a Geodude.

Both Brock and I were grinning when I answered his lead with my own.

"Vauban! Report!"

Out from my end of the field popped one cute little Bulbasaur, looking quite comical with a giant bruise on her smiling face.

"Well then, Ranger… It's fighting time." Brock grunted.

Like I said-

-A total meathead.

"VAUBAN! POP A FLARE!"

"SEVENTEEN! HUNKER DOWN!"

Vauban fired off one of her phosphorescent seeds, and Brock's Geodude buried itself in the sand.

Brock was playing cautious.

A cocky Ranger generally has the muscle to back the speech.

Brock needed to know what I was planning.

I shielded my eye in an elbow when Vauban's flare ignited.

Brock wanted to know what my Vauban strategy was?

A gut full of carbohydrate rich goodies, courtesy of my friends in the Pokemart business…

...And Vauban's Waterloo enhanced chloroplasts being exposed to ultra-dense UV rays.

No sooner than my stage had been set, then it was that my Vauban rolled over onto her side with the sweetest little monster yawn that you ever did hear.

Brock was just staring at me.

What the hell was I smirking about?

Why was my mon taking a nap in his Pit, just twenty meters away from his Geodude?

Vauban and I had talked it over.

It just seemed like the best approach.

"Seventeen…" Brock feigned a command, trying to make me slip and reveal my hand.

No dice, Gym Leader.

Enjoy this smug smile.

"SEVENTEEN! FULL ON ASSAULT!" Brock roared, his options reduced to calling my bluff.

I didn't give Vauban a counter directive.

I just folded my arms and chuckled as that Geodude tossed off its sandy cover, and wobbled his way over to Vauban on his rocky palms.

Vauban didn't stir from her nap.

-Until the Geodude was upon her.

Seventeen raised both fists above his craggy dome-

-And then Vauban got up and spun that Geodude around with her vines at a speed that just seemed unnatural.

Vauban took off in a cloud of grit, disguised as a bluish-green blur.

That's my girl.

Both Brock and Seventeen were struggling to figure out exactly where Vauban had disappeared off to.

I didn't even know where Vauban had gone. She was using the giant rocks of the Pit floor for cover.

Now Brock knew what he was dealing with.

A blitzing guerilla fighter.

My Vauban.

"SEVENTEEN! STAND READY!" Brock roared to his Geodude, and both the Gym Leader and the mon scanned the field for any sign of Vauban.

I took a quick gander at the flare.

We had roughly ten minutes to go before it burned out or touched down.

Brock was watching me like a hawk.

If he couldn't see my mon's movements, then he could wait for an order of mine to reveal Vauban's location.

Too bad for Brock…

...Vauban and I had talked it out beforehand.

"THERE SHE IS!" Brock roared to his Geodude, but his mouth had only just finished pronouncing the third syllable when Vauban's speeding form reached Seventeen.

Vauban ran past Seventeen's stony ass without even touching him.

Seventeen had locked up.

What the hell had just torn past him?

The poor Geodude was that surprised.

Then that Geodude heard the zip of Vauban's trailing vines in the sand-

-Before Seventeen looked down just in time to see his hands being wrapped in thick green chords.

And now that Geodude was moving faster than he'd ever moved in his life.

-Dragged behind the green bullet that was my Vauban.

She had Seventeen in a noose, and that Geodude was choking down Pit sand at mach ten.

"VAUBAN! BUST A NUT!" I roared to my little girl, and Brock hollered something to his mon.

I didn't hear what Brock shouted.

I don't think his Geodude did either.

I could barely hear my own ears ringing over the repetitive _crack_ of Seventeen's face impacting the Pit stones at peak velocity.

-Vauban was slamming Seventeen's ass off of every rock that she passed, as my little girl booked a lap around the perimeter of the Pit.

Seventeen couldn't mount much of a defense against Vauban with all that shit hitting him at high speed, but he wasn't quite suffering yet.

Geodudes are fricken tough.

We needed to split Number seventeen's carapace wide open if we wanted to do some real damage to him.

…

Rock-Types.

Synonymous with "tough as fuck."

Rock-Types are ridiculous. Most species of Rock-Type mon genetically exchange speed and wits for rugged bulk and crazy power. The single most common feature of all Rock-Types is their carapace. Comprised of feldspar, quartz, and calcium carbonate, this carapace arranges those mineral components into crystalline lattice structures, effectively making some of the most robust naturally occurring armors to have ever been discovered on a living organism.

There are two different taxonomic classifications within the Rock-Type index.

There are the standard Rock-Type mon, known as the Bioliths, which sit quite cozy in the pre-Brink's originally established phylums.

And then there are the unusual lifeforms known as the Minerals.

Bioliths are pretty much like every other kind of mon, taxonomically speaking. They have blood in their arteries, brains in their skulls, and organs in their body cavities. Evidence procured from the mon fossil records suggest that the Biolith's carapace was one of the very first survival adaptations of the early mon. It is the predominate feature of everything that we've dug up thus far from the Brink's old inorganic expulsions. Over time, Pokemon evolution stripped this trait from most modern day species, in an effort to exploit the 'speed' survival realm that most early Bioliths left untouched.

But as far as evolution is concerned, there is no point in fixing something that isn't broken.

A good deal of modern mon species still hold on to that early-era evolutionary design:

-The Rock-Type's Carapace.

And the Rock-Type mon have used that impressive armor to establish dominance in almost every environment that they inhabit.

Then we have the Minerals.

These guys are just plain fucking weird.

As far as we can tell, whatever world every other mon evolved from…

-It wasn't the same world that birthed the Mineral mon.

Just like the Ghosts and the Pollutants, the Mineral mon defined a whole new taxonomic phylum back in the early post-Brink era.

The closest living relatives to the Minerals are the Pollutants, seeing as they both share that distinct silane structured chemical code that substitutes for the standard carbon-protein based RNA foundation intrinsic to all other lifeforms.

The defining difference between the Minerals and the Pollutants?

The Pollutants are just symbiotic super colonies of crude single-celled silicon-based lifeforms.

The Minerals are complex multicellular silicon-based lifeforms.

They're so different in terms of taxonomy, that humanity had to separate the Pollutants and the Minerals into their own distinct phylums.

Silicon-based lifeforms.

Weird fucking things, man.

Ammonia resides inside of their cell membranes instead of water.

Silicon, zinc, carbon, and iron comprise most of the solids in their cellular structures.

And that shit carries over into the large scale.

Meaning that Minerals have tissue structures more akin to alloy composites instead of the standard meaty softness of most 'normal' carbon-based lifeforms.

In short, Minerals are built like rocks from the inside out.

Unlike the Bioliths, the Minerals' carapace isn't just an armor comprised of dead tissues and metabolized dirt worn solely to protect their vital organs.

A Mineral's carapace is a multi-functioning organ, handling respiration, locomotion, circulation, and digestion.

Semipermeable membranes.

That's how the Minerals get the elements that their cellular replication requires, and how they move those materials around between their cells.

 _Almost exclusively through permeation._

Minerals, just like the Pollutants, don't actually have a shelf life.

In short, they don't deteriorate when they age.

But being complex multicellular organisms, Minerals have something that the Pollutants don't.

A complex nervous system, and the silicon-life based version of a brain.

Minerals are wired just like every other living thing on this planet. Kill, eat, grow, mate, repeat.

They possess the exact same level of rationalization potential that the separate complex carbon-based lifeforms do.

The Mineral mons' hardware is just a whole hell of a lot more robust than the carbon-based lifeforms' organs are.

Brock's entire Novice team was comprised of Mineral mon.

You can't even hurt these things until you crack their carapace.

-And a Mineral mon's carapace is _stupidly_ tough _._

…

Vauban was flogging the shit out of Seventeen. We hadn't even made a dent in his carapace yet, but Vauban had probably permanently damaged that Geodude's brain with her incessant pummeling.

It must have funny to watch from the Loft. At the scope offered by that height and distance, the spectators could probably see Vauban's grinning face in her crazy fast dash.

"VAUBAN! ENOUGH PLAYING AROUND! SHATTER THAT GEODUDE!" I roared a fresh order to my little girl. Brock folded his arms and waited.

The Geodude couldn't free himself from Vauban's vines. Brock had two choices.

One, wait it out, and hope that Vauban couldn't crack his Geodude.

Two, bench his Geodude, and remove him from the match.

Substitutions could only be called when mon were not currently engaged.

And Vauban's siege on Seventeen was ceaseless and drawn out.

Vauban found what we needed to split that Geodude open.

Brock's own Pit had provided.

A big.

Sharp.

Rock.

Can you crack a walnut with another walnut?

Well, Vauban and I were going to test it out, substituting the walnuts with a Geodude and a rock.

Vauban came to a sand spraying halt right before the stone in question-

My little girl lifted that heavy Geodude almost ten-meters high into the air with her fully uncoiled vines…

And then Vauban just let Seventeen dangle there, giving him a few seconds to look at the Pit from a bird's eye point of view-

-Before Vauban brought Seventeen's ass down with a whip of her vines right against the jagged edge of that rock.

-That sound made even me wince.

That blow could not have felt good, carapace or no carapace.

And my merciless little girl was winding up for another whipping.

 _Whack._

 _Whack._

 _Whack._

 _WHACK._

My balls were climbing up into my stomach, _that's how uncomfortable that sound made me feel._

That carapace was soon to be fucked.

I had no way of telling if Seventeen was unconscious yet, Vauban was swinging that Geodude around so violently that I could barely make his shape out.

"Enough."

That was Brock.

I'd left the Gym Leader with little other option.

Brock had elected to bench Seventeen before Vauban could kill him.

I said that I'd give Brock a spectacle…

And that was just a teaser.

Novice rank.

Pffft.

I'd just destroyed a Gym Leader's Novice Geodude like it was child's play.

Don't underestimate me, Indigo League…

I'm gonna spill ink all over your legislation regarding League certified Rangers by the end of the day.

Brock put his Geodude back into a Pokeball, and then dragged a line through the sand with his toe.

...I think he was smiling.

"Fine game, Ranger. But I think that you might be batting a little high for your rank."

Brock was catching on.

Good.

I needed his help fixing something.

"Well then, Ranger, are you going to make use of one of your substitutions?" Brock asked, looking up from his toeline in the sand with a game face on. League Code gave me the right to substitute my mon before Brock could send out his next mon out.

I looked over at my little girl, who was gazing longingly at me for some sign of approval.

I granted it to her with a cheesy grin.

"Nope." I answered Brock.

...I was only going to need one substitution to finish playing Brock for a fool, anyways.

Brock tightened up.

"Alright then. Next one up from me." Brock wound up his pitch, and released the second mon in his Novice roster.

The Roggenrola.

Unlike the craggy structure of the Geodudes, Roggenrolas are compact, smooth sided, and shaped like a dodecahedron. They don't have much in the way of grapple points, and those angled sides could deflect direct impacts away from a Roggenrola's dripping core.

That yellow core may have looked like a good place to hit, but it was just about as rugged as the rest of the carapace.

My hammering antics weren't going to crack his mon.

But that yellow core was still susceptible to attacks.

 _And even more susceptible to certain attacks than the Geodude was._

That ammonia damp yellow core was the closest thing a Roggenrola had to a mouth.

And the old strategy that Koga Kurosawa had used to kick Brock's ass out of the League Finals last season was going to revisit the Pewter City Gym Leader in his own Pit.

"BLUNDER! GET ROLLING!" Brock gave the order, and his goofy looking mon used its kicking feet to roll its bizarre body across the Pit to my Vauban.

It moved pretty fast for a Rock-Type.

-Not as fast as Vauban, though.

"Blow him a kiss, Vauban." I chuckled.

She knew exactly what I meant. My little girl waited until the Roggenrola was almost upon her, before Vauban's bulb started quivering.

"BLUNDER, GET OUT OF THERE NOW!"

"-WITH TONGUE, VAUBAN!"

Vauban tore through the sand on intercept with Blunder, just as the Roggenrola attempted to divert his heading.

No sooner had Vauban made a tumbling tackle for the rolling Roggenrola, then my little girl's bulb puked out a cloud of yellow glittering pollen. Both Vauban and Blunder were caught in the fallout. Contact established at ground zero.

Vauban wasn't affected by her own pollen, of course.

-But even with his foreign biological origins, that Roggenrola was soaking up a cocktail of Waterloo's weaponized toxins.

Waterloo had the foresight to equip their Saboteur Classes with a hydrochloric agent.

-Which does not agree particularly well with a Mineral's physiology.

 _Not very well at all._

That shit was going to start breaking Blunder's cells down into Mineral soup by destabilizing the silicon structures that formed the very foundations of his genetic code.

That Roggenrola was already fucked.

He was going to start melting like a wet sugarcube.

-All it was going to take was time.

"BOOK IT, VAUBAN! TIME IS NOT _OUR_ ENEMY!" I was already gloating. Blunder was beginning to shake as the hydrochloric agent hastened its assault on him by soaking through the Roggenrola's dripping core.

Brock had witnessed a Mineral's reaction to hydrochloric exposure before.

Thank you, Koga.

Bringing back fond memories, Brock?

No?

I didn't think so.

Brock was pissed.

You don't expect military grade toxins to be utilized in a Novice match.

You don't expect a Novice ranked Trainer to request unrestricted format so that they can legally use those lethal toxins.

 _You don't even expect a Novice ranked Trainer to have access to that level of dangerous shit._

Here's a hint, Brock…

-I'm not a Novice.

...And this 'match' is going to prove it.

"Get off the field, Blunder." Brock benched his Roggenrola on the spot.

There was no way that Brock's rock was going to keep up with my Vauban.

My little girl could book it to one end of the Pit and take a cat nap while she waited for Blunder to sizzle down into a puddle.

Brock could still save Blunder if he got his Roggenrola medical treatment ASAP upon release from the Pokeball.

It was the same behavior that Brock had displayed back in his last season's League Finalist match with Koga. The Pewter City Gym Leader was trying to save his mon instead of killing them for a victory.

If Brock had sacrificed one of his Championship mon to Koga, most League Analysts agreed that Brock could have won the fight. But that was all moot, because exploiting the other Trainer's behavior is all part of the League scene. Koga got inside Brock's head, and then the Fuschia Ninja fucked with the Pewter City Gym Leader's morality.

-And now I was playing mindgames with Brock, bringing all that bad history up.

I'd forced a Gym Leader to bench two of his mon.

And the closest that Brock had yet come to scratching my grinning girl, was the minor scrapes that Vauban had sustained in tackling Blunder.

I was making a mockery of Brock's Novice team in his own Pit.

For a Gym Leader-

-This situation was fucking humiliating.

But now Brock had seen my full hand regarding Vauban.

I had shown Brock everything that my little girl could do.

And his Onix was guaranteed to be in a whole nother league seperate from the rest of his Novice team.

Wrapping Vauban's vines around an Onix would only end in the death my little girl.

Toxin was out of the question.

Brock would see it coming a klick away, and the Gym Leader would have his Onix prepared to counter or avoid Vauban's Saboteur strategy.

To the casual eye, I was relying on my Bulbasaur to get me through this match.

To Brock's League Registry educated eyes, he _knew_ that I was relying on a Bulbasaur to get through his challenge.

Brock knew what kind of mon I had congregated together to form my Squad.

Vauban, my pain in the ass Bulbasaur.

Cortez, my Growlithe, who was nothing more than some tasty snake bait to an Onix.

And Darwin, my Magikarp, who couldn't even coordinate a fall from a four meter height onto a meter-wide target.

All Brock had to do was take out Vauban, and then the rest of my Squad would fall like dominos.

And now the Pewter City Gym Leader knew my little girl's limitations.

...But what Brock didn't know-

-Was that my Squad now included a _fourth member._

...And Brock didn't know this-

-Because the Indigo League's Registry hadn't updated in time.

So technically…

-I wasn't allowed to use my fourth Squad member.

But technically…

- _I could._

I had a drum of ink to overturn in the League Legislation.

This could bite me in the ass so hardcore that if ACE did kill me, they would effectively be dealing a mercy blow to my newly miserable existence.

But if it worked...

-Then I might actually get myself exactly what I wanted…

It was a risk that I was willing to take.

"Okay, Ranger. You had your fun. I'm actually quite impressed. But I'm afraid that regret is a dish served in the coldest repast. You should have taken my offer. Forfeit now, and I won't have my snake smear your cute little Bulbasaur across the Pit. You can come back and challenge me when you're ready for the real show." Brock's voice was going low into the danger zone.

He was mad as fuck.

And I was about to make him even more irate.

"Hope you don't mind, Gym Leader. I'm gonna need you to fill out some paperwork for me after I'm done wasting your Onix. _A lot of paperwork._ " Big 'ol cocky smile for my opponent.

Hint:

Fuck your courtesy forfeit suggestion.

You've heard my thunder.

Now prepare to reap my whirlwind.

"I want to apologize in advance for what's about to happen, Ranger. Are you going to call a substitution?"

Brock had no idea what he was stepping into.

"Nope." I answered, disregarding my chance to switch in another mon.

Not yet.

I had an impression to make first.

"Fine. Shale. End this charade." Brock lifted his Onix's Heavy Ball, and released the star of his Novice team.

The beam of light condensed into a massive figure, taking three times longer than a normal Pokeball to format and reform the sheer scale of Shale's physiology.

And there he was.

Shale, Brock's barely legal Novice Onix.

The devourer of so many Novice ranked Trainer dreams.

I couldn't have been more disappointed.

I had been led to believe that Shale was a mature Onix.

But the rock-snake in front of me was just a juvenile.

A mere six meters long. All of nine tonnes in weight.

Not even a full century old yet.

Chris had been yanking my chain.

This was no Onix.

It was just a flippin baby.

I'd bet that Shale's eyes were still soft to the touch.

Shale probably still had a pair of nerve clusters just a freaking centimeter deep beneath the carapace in either corner of his mouth.

I bet that this Onix hadn't even lost his first horn yet.

And I guarantee that he didn't have a taste for Mozart either.

What a disgrace to Onixiakind.

Doug would be ashamed.

Doug had taught me everything he knew about Onixia.

The Cap's old Onix was four times the size of Brock's pathetic piece of shit.

"Actually, Gym Leader… I think I'll use a substitution now. Come on back to me, Vauban." I pissed Brock off even more with a delayed substitution. My carefree act was all part of the impression that I was trying to make. Vauban hightailed it over to my ankles.

Shale may have been tiny for an Onix, but that rock-snake anatomy conjured up foul recent memories for my diminutive bruised-faced Vauban.

Brock folded his arms with a scowl.

I was toying with him.

-And Brock knew it.

I lifted my Heavy Ball with a silent prayer.

-Please remember me…

" _Damascus, report."_

-One.

Big.

Beam.

Of light...

-A five.

Second.

Delay...

-And...

There.

He.

 _Was._

 _-_ Oh.

Fuck...

-I had totally forgotten...

 _...Just how big he was._

Brock's jaw fell right off his face.

There was no way in hell that this massive thing had come from a Novice Trainer's Pokeball.

 _There was no way in hell that a Novice Trainer had the know how or balls required to command a bloody Onix like that._

My stand in for Darwin, who was currently too busy stuffing his fat face full of fish-flakes in a rented Pokemart Tank.

 _Damascus_ , Doug's _fucking ancient_ Onix.

"Damascus?"

 _Rumble._

-Okay, if he wanted to kill me, he'd have done it by now…

"You ready?"

 _RUMBLE._

He knew who I was.

-Thank God.

 _...What a pretty snake._

Even Brock, the Kanto Rock-Type Master, had to take a breathless moment just to admire Damascus, who was casting his huge fucking shadow over the quivering Shale.

Shale was a young Onix, with a gritty gray carapace, and a meter long crude horn.

And little Shale was just plain fucking ugly compared to Damascus.

Damascus was a dull white in color. Age and a lifetime of abuse had weathered his carapace into a glossy sheen.

Damascus's horn had broken off an eon ago, and it never bothered to grow back. But instead, the old battle wound had raised an intricate crystalline jade scar where the horn had once been. Other than looking gorgeous, that green scar didn't do much else for my snake.

Whereas the young Shale had jutting features and jagged angles wherever his flatten planes met, Damascus's entire face and beaded body had been worn rounded and smooth ages ago.

Damascus looked like a string of pearls compared to Shale, who like all young Onixia, resembled a dirty necklace of craggy pebbles.

-And then Damascus shifted, and the light caught his namesake's symbols, etched in faint gold across every pearlescent meter of him.

Massive grainy whorls, cast in a King's metal, could just be seen in the fading light of day.

 _Damascus steel._

Those glorious patterns were the inspiration for this Onix's name, and that name was given to him by a blacksmith Ranger.

I couldn't even look at this snake without tearing up.

You would never believe how close this beautiful monster had been to my deceased Captain.

...And I had the memories to prove it.

"Damascus…"

My voice was hoarse, just from remembering Doug's laugh again.

"-Let's finish this quickly."

 _RUMBLE._

Shale shrieked when that white mountain fell on him. Grandpa snake was gonna eat baby snake for fucking breakfast. The two had barely connected in a one-sided slaughter when Brock flagged his forfeit.

 _-We had won._

...Maybe…

"DAMASCUS! ABSTAIN!" I roared it as loudly as I could, trying to get my Onix off of Brock's, before Damascus bit Shale in half.

I couldn't believe it when that majestic serpent lifted himself off of Shale, and slitherer his sparkling bulk slowly over towards us. Wrapping those glimmering coils of his around Vauban and me, Damascus greeted us like we were his own offspring.

"Nicely done, Gramps." I patted Damascus's side with a heavy hand. I don't think that he could feel it, but Damascus saw my hand falling on him with those milky blue eyes of his.

Damascus knew what my gesture meant.

"...Nicely done…"

" _Ranger."_

That was not a happy voice.

"I want a _word_ with you, if you don't mind _._ "

Brock.

Was.

Pissed.

"Alright. Damascus, Vauban, shake it out. You two handled the mon, now your CO has to go duke it out with the Gym Leader. Don't pick a fight with each other while I'm dealing with Brock." I sighed as I left Damascus's coils and marched right past the trembling Shale.

That infant Onix was scared out of his Goddamn mind, but his injuries weren't all that bad, given that Brock and I had separated our snakes before Shale ended up dead.

I could smell the ammonia blood when I stepped over Shale's twitching tail. Damascus had nearly killed him.

A couple of crushed beads may hurt an Onix like a bitch, but in time, the little Shale would recover from his mauling to compete again.

Brock was glaring at me something fierce when I came to stand before his folded armed, muscular figure.

"Nice Onix. How old is he?" Brock may have wanted to snap my neck, but he couldn't help but praise my snake.

"The Rangers took a core sample a few years back. We reckon that Damascus is well over two-thousand years old." I answered.

Brock quirked an eyebrow.

"Older than the Brink?" Brock asked, surprise plain in his voice.

"The Brink is what dumped Damascus here. He was probably already an old boy when the bombs were still falling." I replied.

My tone was dry with reverence.

" _That is one old snake…"_ Brock looked at Damascus longingly. With a bit of League training, a gem like Damascus could be the flagship of Brock's Championship team.

"Damascus was my CO's… And now… Damascus is mine…" I murmured, still hearing Doug's stupid jokes in my ears.

Brock may have been a meathead, but he could hear the grief in my voice, and see the memory in my wet eyes.

"I'm sorry for your loss, Ranger. Your CO must have been one hell of a tenacious son of a bitch to have tamed an Onix like _that_. But-"

Here it comes...

"-I'm denying your victory in my Gym today. Sorry Ranger, but what you just pulled is something that the League refers to as kiting. Your registry didn't list an Onix in your roster, and a Novice ranked Trainer isn't even allowed to own one. I'm halfway tempted to revoke your License when I write your citation, but because your Bulbasaur actually beat the first two of my mon, I'm just temporarily suspending your participation from the League."

Shit.

That almost sounded familiar.

I think I might have said something like that to Tony…

Well, Karma is a bitch…

 _-But._

...Karma is not _my_ bitch.

"Well… Damn. I didn't want to do this, but… I'm afraid that I'm gonna have to contest that citation, Gym Leader." I kept my face dignified with an honest expression.

The time for rustling Brock's beehive was over.

Now I had to show him my dirty hand.

"Under what grounds?" Brock growled. I took a deep breath.

"Under the League's clause regarding adherence to foreign registries. You see… I'm technically a Indigo League certified Trainer… But I'm also a sworn Ranger." I began my reiteration softly.

"The Rangers aren't a foreign League-"

"-No, but we have our own form of Pokemon Registry, recognised by the League. Under article four, which was added after the controversy that Wallace of Hoenn inspired when he crushed Will in the Indigo League Seasonal Finals six years ago, Wallace defeated Will by using a Sharpedo that wasn't in the Indigo Registry. But Wallace's Sharpedo was recorded in the Hoenn League Registry. Because of the conflicting Registry accounts, the I.A.S. ruled in favor of Wallace, claiming that because of Hoenn and Indigo's differently scheduled Registry updates, any foreign League Registry would take precedence over the hosting League's Registry. And in section eight of High Command's adopted League Certified Ranger Doctrine, you will find a very specific line that states-"

I had to pause for breath.

" _-Due to the implementation of G.I. Pokemon in the Indigo League Registry, the pertaining G.I. Pokemons' dispatches will henceforth be regarded as a 'foreign Registry,' so as to avoid violating League Code twenty-seven, regarding the use of servicemon in League Certified-"_

"-I got it. Thanks." Brock spat.

I took another deep breath.

I didn't dare smile yet.

"There is still one problem though, Ranger."

Yep.

There was.

And this one wasn't covered by vague League policies and beta-stage legislation.

"You are ranked as a Novice Trainer in the Indigo League Registry. You are not even allowed to own an Onix at the Novice rank. Maybe the Rangers have a different merit system for determining Trainer accountability, but that doesn't carry over into the League. You are still looking at disqualification for the unlicensed use of an Onix in a Novice ranked battle. Not to mention a minor citation and a penalty fee for violating the Species Clause Conduct. So what have do you have for that?"

Not a good sign.

I needed Brock on my side.

But it sounded like he wanted me to burn.

"Brock… The only thing that I have is an example of my performance in your Pit today. Vauban ruined your first two mon in fair combat. Damascus obeyed my commands, regardless of the green rim lining my License. That… and I did request unrestricted, just so that I could prove a point." I looked Brock right into his cold eyes.

" _I am not a Novice, and you damn well know it."_

Brock cleared his throat.

I worked my mouth.

Then-

"I can't let you go unpunished, Ranger. Regardless of your skills, you still have to climb the same ladder that everyone else does. You are not walking out of my Pit without some form of disciplinary action." Brock warned.

Okay…

Here goes nothing…

...And everything.

"I have an idea regarding my punishment, if you'd like to hear it." I proposed.

Brock tilted his head.

I'll take that as a ' _proceed.'_

"Bump my License up to Intermediate-Two. It will make my early League Career a living hell, but it will also give me leeway to deploy Damascus in future engagements. My solution kills two Spearows with one stone."

Brock laughed.

-Oh fuck me…

"You know how much red tape I'd have to go through in order to do that? You need three Gym Badges to earn Intermediate-Two. Why the hell should I put myself through that pen and paper shitfest for you?" Brock demanded an answer from me.

I could think of a few reasons.

-To get Chris off my ass?

-So Damascus doesn't get bored?

-So ACE doesn't kill me?

-For the future of humanity?

"Because I earned it, Gym Leader, just as I have earned everything that I have ever had." I reached up to my face, and pressed a fingertip into my glass eye. Pivoting the fake iris into the corner my socket, I stared at Brock with my one good eye.

The Gym Leader took a step back.

Not many people could see it, and I generally refrained from letting people know just how broken my body is.

I didn't want pity.

But I'd give Brock an example of what I had been through if he asked for it.

"...Okay." Brock muttered, once he'd pulled himself back together.

I adjusted my fake eye back into the proper position.

"You'll get your Boulder Badge, and an Intermediate License. Just so that the next Gym Leader you face makes a fucking scene out of your ass. Good luck with taking on the Intermediate-Twos with just your ancient Onix and a prayer, Ranger."

Brock didn't loosen his crossed arms.

I had secured my first Badge.

And I'd be getting my Intermediate License.

-But I sure as hell wasn't getting a farewell handshake.

Aw, well…

Maybe in the League Finals…

"It was a pleasure challenging you for the Boulder Badge, Brock. Don't strain yourself lifting, meathead."

I smirked when I presented my salute to the Pewter City Gym Leader.

Brock just sighed, and shook his head, before the Pewter City Gym Leader motioned for me to leave.

I pivoted on a heel, recalled Damascus and Vauban to their Pokeballs, and then headed for the Loft.

 _And that's when I saw him._

I'd almost forgotten about you too, damnit…

One black figure, mercifully wearing his pricey shades, was leaning up against the left outside column of the Pit's porticus.

Even with those shades hiding his eyes, I could still feel that creepy fucking gaze from halfway across the Pit.

 _I was going to have to walk right past that freak just to leave the Pit._

Goddamnit, I _really_ didn't want to deal with his bullshit Ghosts right now…

I finally felt like I could live again…

I approached the stranger cautiously. It seemed as though Mister Crypt was just casually waiting for his match with Brock.

I stepped right into his Distortion seep, wondering if that Ghost with the blade was going to try beheading me this time.

I could feel the fucking creeps reaching for me from the other side…

I marched right past the stranger's figure, trying my damndest not to look at him.

But I couldn't help it.

Some crazy masochistic urge lifted my bold eyes to his concealed ones.

A slow smirk crawled up one corner of his mouth, and the silhouettes of those grey eyes could been seen through the tint of his shades.

 _Excuse me, Mister Crypt._

I'd just like to go sit down without drawing your freaky fucking attention.

I strode into the Entry Hall of the Pit, rounded a corner in the ascent chamber, and then booked my ass up the Loft stairs, just begging for a space clear of Ghosts.

…

I entered the Challenger's Loft, slamming the door behind me. The other three Trainers sitting on their respective benches were all giving me the stinkeye. I just smirked at each and every one of them, and then sat down on the center row. No sooner had my ass been adequately situated, than the ginger puke had to pipe up.

"Brock's gonna cite you for kiting." The little shit said it like it was gospel. I just snorted.

"No he's not." That pissed the ornery little fuck off.

"What's he going to do?" The old boy in the peacoat asked. I smiled at him.

"Bump my License up to Intermediate."

"-You're kidding me!" The ginger was gonna blow a gasket. The peacoat snickered.

"Man, Brock is letting you off easy. If I tried to pull a stunt like that, I'd probably get my License revoked for the remainder of the season." The peacoat was shaking his head. Now it was the cute little thing in the push-up bra's turn to open her pretty mouth.

"How did you get a Novice License when you own a trained Onix?" The skinny lass was looking at me in awe.

"Damascus is a new addition to my outfit. The League only updates the registry on the second Tuesday of the month. Only once per month. The last time they updated the registry was the Tuesday before last. Damascus was assigned to me only three days ago, which technically forbids his use in League sponsored competition. But due to his status as a Ranger, and some _loopholes_ in my League certification, Damascus's G.I. dispatch qualifies as official League registration." I smugly confessed.

"Fucking Rangers and their fucking G.I. mon… Now the League is gonna have to reconsider the legislation because of you." The peacoat thought that it was the funniest damn thing ever.

"You still cheated." The ginger was glaring at me like I had just kicked his Meowth in the groin.

"Yes I did. _And I'm gonna get away with it too._ " I gave the kid my evil grin, knowing that my crazy eyes and nasty look would shut his riled ass up.

I looked back out to the Pit. The stranger had taken his position in the field, arms folded and completely unconcerned. Brock was in his corner, mopping his brow with a towel and taking a long hit from a cigarette. The Battle Screen was blank. They had yet to start their match.

"He do anything weird while I was gone?" I asked the Loft. Everybody just shuddered.

"If you mean something other than exist? No. He just sat alone on the top bench and didn't bother to say or do anything." The peacoat answered. The lass was holding herself something tight, looking down at the stanger like he was her worst nightmare made flesh.

"What is he? When he came in, the whole Loft became-" The lass could only retch, which more than adequately described the stranger's effect on the Loft.

"Never met a Ghost Trainer before, have you?" I asked the girl. She rose from her curl and looked at me all bug eyed, while the obnoxious ginger next to the peacoat turned white.

"So that's what it was…" The ginger whispered. He crossed his legs and bent over his lap in a suspiciously awkward posture. He was trying to hide something. Then I noticed the wet spot on the ginger's pants.

As far as I'm concerned, soiling yourself in the presence of a Ghost is a perfectly dignified reaction.

I almost felt bad for the stupid ginger.

"What about you, Four-badges? You ever meet a Ghost?" I turned to the peacoat. He had his hollow eyes fixed on the stranger down in the Pit. He swallowed, and then jerked his head in a twitchy nod.

"Outside of Saffron. Got pinged by a Lavender Town Channeler on the Grey Mile. Freaky asshole had a Dusclops." The peacoat muttered.

"Did you win?" I asked, curious. He blew his lips out in a sarcastic sputter, like I'd just asked him something stupid.

"Are you kidding me? I forfeited the match right after he took my first mon out. I could have won if I had kept at it, but I don't want to get haunted. If he was a poor sport about losing... -You don't take that risk when battling a Channeler. You just let them win and pray that their Ghosts aren't hungry." The peacoat answered.

"Don't have a Dark-Type, do you?" I asked. The peacoat shook his head.

"Well, shit. You wanna talk about citations? The League Legislation should just ban Ghosts from competing." I expressed my sympathy for the peacoat's misfortune. The poor fucker just shrugged and shook his head wordlessly.

"I wonder what's taking them so long?" The lass spoke up. I blew a heavy breath out of my nose and settled back.

"I was wondering the same thing." I murmured.

"Distortion seep. It's probably playing havoc with the electronics in the Pit. That creepy bastard is giving off one _big_ sink." The peacoat threw in. That got everyone moving a little closer together.

Myself included.

"-Hell, the Channeler that I fought seemed normal enough, right up until I handed him his winnings. I couldn't even feel his Dusclop's haunting until I was standing right on his-"

The Battle Screen blinked on, interrupting the peacoat. The Battle Screen was booting up its operating system, giving us another few seconds of agonized waiting. Then the stranger's foreign Trainer Licence hit the feed. And everybody jumped out of their skins.

It was was rimmed in platinum.

A League Finalist.

This was a Championship Match.

Every eye in the Loft shot to the upper right corner of the Licence, just as the first Flame flickered into life.

It was followed by a second Flame.

Then a third.

Then a fourth.

Then every person sitting in the Loft collectively shat their pants.

 _The Fifth Flame lit up_.

-No.

Fucking-

- _Way._

A Penta-Flame.

" _...Where the hell is this guy from?"_ The peacoat was the first among us to find his weak voice.

"-Kalos." I gasped. The peacoat leaned in towards the Pit, his jaw dropping to the floor.

"...Oh my God… _That's TH_ …" Both hands covered the peacoat's gaping mouth. I hadn't a clue what he was talking about. His eyes had grown so wide that the incredulous expression stretched his pale face into a waxy gleam.

" _The Kalos Champion..."_

" _-The Eidolon King."_

...

TH.

Don't even get me started.

-That _freak…_

...No.

-I'm not going there.

...Not just yet.

But that Gym battle with Brock was what set everything off.

 _My Gym Battle._

The end result of TH's challenge to Brock wasn't recorded as a battle.

It was a slaughter.

Brock was a Duo-Flame Championship Trainer.

He had beaten two members of the Elite four to earn those Flames.

TH was a Penta-Flame.

He had wiped out the Kalosian Elite Four and bested a League Champion to set that blaze.

 _-And he was Theron Halcyon._

 _AKA 'The Hole.'_

Even Lance was terrified of him.

-Simply because TH was invincible.

And I'm not just talking about his flawless competition records in the League either.

 _Everybody wanted his head on a stake._

 _-And nobody could claim it._

Every day of TH's life was threatened by assassination plots and attempts, perpetrated by every government organization on the planet.

The Death Curse and its casualties be damned.

TH was a walking holocaust.

He did whatever the fuck he wanted to, killed whomever he wanted to, when and wherever he wanted to-

 _In genocide proportions._

-And nobody could touch him.

One, TH was an offshoot nephew of the Halcyon Noble house, which served as the Kalosian version of the secret service, granting TH a formidable ally in the political sector.

Two, those Ghosts guarded TH's ass like a fucking interdimensional army.

Every single assassination attempt had been foiled by his shade's unnatural awareness and supernatural powers. The failures were so humiliating that the provincial governments just decided to throw in the towel. 'Cause after the bloodbath that TH visited Sinnoh's Theocratic Parliament with…

...Yeah, nobody in power wanted to piss TH off after he single-handedly toppled a regime.

Funny enough, those guardian spirits of his seemed to be the only things that could kill TH.

All we had to do was wait for them to finish haunting him off.

But the damage that TH could do to the world in that timeframe was worthy of an epic.

 _A Brink Collapse Epic._

Of course, just like the average Kantonese denizen, I didn't know any of this back then. I didn't know anything pertaining to the offshore politics or the overseas Leagues. All I knew was that there was a foreign Champion who had appeared in Pewter City bearing a challenge for Brock's Gym Badge.

And I was gonna get to see how a Champion fights.

It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I was actually stupid enough to get excited about it.

I honestly thought that this was going to be an awe-inspiring educational experience.

 _And I was fucking wrong._

TH's battle with Brock was a nightmare to spectate.

It just about killed me and everyone in the Pit.

Those Ghosts were bad enough when they were holed up in the Distortion.

But when TH woke them up for a fight…

Oh.

My.

God.

…

Brock strode out to his ledge, a sweat towel draped across his bare shoulders.

Now Brock and I may have had a recent bitch-fit regarding my less than honorable conduct, but I had to give that squinty-eyed muscular fuck props.

He was facing TH off like a man.

Cool.

Calm.

Collect.

For all the good it was gonna do him.

Abiding by the League Code, Pewter City's Gym Leader sent his mon out first, giving the advantage of species identification to the challenger.

And what a mon it was.

Brock's Championship hardened Rhyperior.

Twenty-four tonnes of sheer rippled muscle protected by a heavily armored brown carapace.

Monkind's tessera-pedal exaggeration of the earth's long extinct Rhinocerotidae family.

It was equipped with a helical meter-and-a-half long shearing horn, robust enough to lead a charge straight through a Route wall-

-And then breach through the opposite Route wall all in the same dash.

The Battle Screen named that bulky five-meter tall beast Quartz.

-And the look on Quartz's face meant that she didn't take any guff from TH.

Now it was TH's turn.

But he didn't make a move.

We all just sat there, chewing off our nails, waiting for TH to summon up one of his horrors for battle.

But TH just stood there and smirked down Quartz like _he_ was her opponent.

And the seconds ticked by…

Finally, Brock had tolerated enough of nothing happening.

He shouted something at TH, something that we couldn't make out from our seats in the Loft.

But TH didn't do a damn thing, and the waiting resumed...

-Right up until the unbelievable happened.

Brock gave Quartz an order to attack.

 _And there was still no Ghost on TH's end of the field._

That Rhyperior dropped to all fours, and tore her massive feet into the sand, ripping an earth-shaking line towards TH in a full speed charge.

Everybody in the Loft stood up in shock.

-Was Brock going to kill TH?

...As if Brock could.

That Rhyperior came to a sudden stop just one meter short of TH, and by the bucking of Quartz's hindquarters and the collapse of her bow, it was obvious that her vicious maneuver wasn't intentional.

Quartz had been forced into a violent standstill.

 _And a jaw-jarring ring of stone striking metal reverberated off the rock walls of the Loft._

We all rushed to the ledge of the Loft to see what had stopped Quartz from smearing TH across the Pit.

Not one of us knew what to make of it.

It was artificial. Thin. Triangular. Comprised of tarnished bronze and weathered iron. About two-meters tall and half as much wide.

 _And it was standing between TH and Quartz like an unshakable wall._

TH didn't even make an attempt to evade Quartz's charge. He was unmoved throughout the entire assault. His arms were crossed, his back straight, his heels positioned comfortably together.

And that wicked smirk of his had never shifted.

Then something weird happened to TH's mon.

A flurry of black tattered cloths reached out from behind the metal plate and wrapped around Quartz. That ghostly fabric was animated by the frenzied slithering of snakes when it violated Brock's struggling mon.

 _And those strangling banners left their mark on Quartz when she fought them off._

Quartz's carapace was burning just from contacting those streamers. Dark whorls faded and reappeared all across the Rhyperior's hide, leaving smoldering acrid cracks wherever they arose.

Quartz had just been cursed.

 _And the hex was already killing her._

My eye was fixed on the plate of metal when Quartz fell back to the halfway mark between her and Brock. I couldn't even fathom what the hell it was. It looked ornamental with all those tarnished bronze filigrees etched into the rusty iron. But the most peculiar design was the repoussed central boss detailing a crescent moon inlaid with turquoise, and a carved ivory egret nesting at the lune's vacant core.

Then I realized what the plate of metal was, just as the repousse fractured at the center and parted horizontally, revealing a cluster of slit-pupil steel eyes. Bloodshot. Blinking. _Living. Eyes._

 _That metal plate was a massive escutcheon._

And that was only half of the Ghost behind it.

The Distortion opened up. It was a small rift, but we could still hear the screaming and chanting all the way from the Loft as the world was dragged towards that tiny black hole. A tatter of cloth descended from the shield, and buried itself savagely into the rift.

 _And then it drew a colossal flamberge from the depths of the Distortion._

It was three meters long. Either edge was chipped and pockmarked. The tip of the blade was broken off, leaving only a cruel shard for the point. The ricasso was bound in a loose knot of frayed red fabric. The pommel of the sword was linked to the shield with a tassel of that eerie black cloth. The fuller was interlaid with cracked turquoise beads and an age-stained ivory relief of a feather. That sword was every bit as decorative and as worn as the shield. They were a matching set. The pair appeared to be an ancient analogue of some ruined armory; the ceremonial property of an elegant King of yore.

The Distortion rift sealed, ending the dimensional vacuum and bringing the chorus of mad voices to a close. The massive blade was raised, and it came to a rest in the shield's bouche, leveling the jagged tip with the wounded Quartz.

Then the black streamers took upon a hulking shape between the shield and the sword.

I could barely see what it was.

The streamers were whipping wildly, concealing and diffracting the _thing_ beneath the shroud.

Then an ethereal gale cast the fabric loose for but a second, and I saw what _it_ was.

And my terror-numbed mind forced the vision out.

 _The connotations invoked by that shape were too horrifying for me to accept._

I had never seen this Ghost before.

I had never even heard of such a mon-

 _-If it even was a mon…_

My dry eye was drawn from that abomination and up towards the crackling Battle Screen, seeking some form of enlightenment.

TH's Ghost was identified by the League records. No species was listed. Only the name.

 _Pariah._

The same Ghost that had almost disemboweled me, just days before in Viridian.

How the hell did TH control _that?_

TH rocked slightly with a chuckle. His shade-hidden eyes were staring down Brock, even as a red light lit up beneath the shroud of his Ghost, just off center of its core.

 _And that light looked straight at Quartz with a rabid twitching pupil._

Quartz was in bad shape. The curse was working its rancor all over her body. The cracks were turning ashen gray at their edges, peeling away Quartz's armor in wispy flakes, while black smoke wafted from the fissures in idle curls.

But Quartz was a Championship heavyweight. A little curse wasn't going to kill Brock's lead before Quartz obliterated the opponent standing in front of her. This was just another day in Quartz's life. Just another wound accrued to scab and scar.

This was exactly what Quartz had been born for.

 _Competition._

And though that Ghost was standing huge next to TH, Quartz towered over it with her sheer mass.

Raw power is the favored trait of any Rock-Type.

Just as it is with their Trainers.

Brock roared a command.

He wasn't worried about Quartz.

This situation was exactly what Brock lived for.

And both he and his mon shared that unrestrained desire for victory.

-That dry need to dominate.

It was the link that bound all Champions and their Pokemon together, as they persevered through every tribulation for that bloody end.

All Champions, except the unnatural adversaries arrayed against Brock and Quartz.

The Ghosts don't care about winning.

They're only concerned about inflicting as much grief and suffering upon their victims as is mortally possible.

To TH, Brock wasn't even an opponent.

In those cursed eyes, Brock was just another plaything.

-And Quartz was TH's means of exacting his entertainment.

TH never gave Pariah a command. There was no need for such mundane communication. Pariah's will was governed by his mortal lord. That Ghost was just a shadow of its master. And when the master makes his move…

...The shadow is bound to imitate.

Quartz loosened a mighty bellowed, and such was the volume of her roar that it jarred the pebbles of the Pit into a rattling cacophony below her gutteral decibels. Flexing her thick arms, Quartz tore a stone the size of a refrigerator up from the floor of the Pit. Effortlessly lifting it in one palm, Quartz took aim at Pariah-

-Then Pariah's shroud whipped wildly forward, caught in that nonexistent gust-

-And a distorted echo of howling wind sounded in time with the shifting of his blade.

Pariah was suddenly crouched before Quartz in a motion that no eye witnessed.

His blade was cast aloft his form, held static in the finish of Pariah's unseen upwards stroke.

Quartz dropped her rock.

She staggered.

Then a trickle of red raced from a fine line connecting her right hip to her left shoulder.

Pariah rose, as he lowered his blade into a resting stance.

Then Quartz reeled backwards beneath a geyser of her own blood.

Brock recalled his mon into her Pokeball before Quartz even hit the ground.

Everybody in the Loft was staring at the lonely Ghost that stood in the crimson center of the Pit.

Every mind was frozen stiff, our comprehension dulled in the process of that impenetrable and resounding-

- _How?_

How had Pariah dropped a Championship Rhyperior with a single blow?

How had a sword cleft a mountain in twain?

I don't even know why Brock bothered to confine Quartz into her Pokeball.

She had only seconds left to finish bleeding out when Brock released her next.

Quartz was already dead. There was nothing that anyone in the world could do to save her from that lethal wound.

Pariah had cleaved Quartz's heart in half with his stroke.

He waited silently on the field like a chess piece, inanimate and surreal.

Then TH flicked his wrist in a lazy gesture.

-And Pariah slammed his sword's jagged point into the sand.

 _Before a giant Distortion rift opened up beneath Pariah to swallow the shroud, sword, and shield._

The rift was dragging the entire Pit into the Distortion. Reflex saved my beret from being consumed by that hell, while my radio screeched aught but static, and the Battle Screen whined and flickered off. The Distortion's scream was killing our tech as it drew all of existence into the nightmare realm.

Brock answered at once, raising a new Pokeball to shoulder height. A jade and beige parapodium appeared from Brock's pokeball. Knobby roots burrowed into the sand, saving the mon from the nightmare's pull. A prostomium separated from the base of the mon, and ascended on a sinewy stalk. The pink chaetae lined pedicel of a Cradily's bud split open to reveal the multicolored core and the barbed prehensive stigma. Brock's Cradily refused to budge, waving its vivid stigma around in an acoustically overwhelmed hiss of challenge. Then the voices from the Distortion became muffled, as something breached the rift to answer that challenge.

 _A mass of white snakes poured out of the rift, grasping the sand surrounding the void with all the sinister vigor of a spider's appendages._

"Oh, hell no…" The peacoat at my shoulder could barely choke out those words in a frail whimper. I looked at my pale compatriot with renewed dread. That voice didn't bode well in my unnerved consciousness. Four-Badges knew what was coming.

" _-Not Typhon…"_

My eyes shot back to the rift, as more snakes poured out. But I was just beginning to realize that TH's next Ghost was not merely the horde of serpents that I initially perceived it to be.

Those snakes were ropey, segmented, flat.

Each was tipped in a ragged red feathered frill.

Then I heard the moan, mere seconds before _Typhon_ pulled its crown from the Distortion.

Blue.

Translucent.

 _Massive._

First the bell rose slowly from the rift, followed shortly by the medusa. As the medusa's white bouquet surfaced, the revelation pertaining to Typhon's identity struck me with all of its vast horror.

Those white things weren't snakes.

 _They were the oral arms of a Jellicent._

The haunters of the deep sea.

The ethereal grave wrights of mankind's aquatic vessels.

-And the Ghost that TH had used to drown both the House of Coronet and the House of Epoch within the Sinnoh theocracy's Parliamentary chambers.

Typhon.

What a stupid name for an apocalypse.

Typhon hauled the remainder of his being from the abyss.

That bell was a perfect sphere. A colossal organ carved with the wrinkles and crevices of a brain swelled against the interior of the bell, filling the shimmering intramural brine with a disturbing spectacle.

Hundreds of red lights flickered and flashed from the confines of those cerebral grooves, each focusing on a feature of this realm before fading away and reappearing in another fleshy furrow. Those red lights were eyes, blinking and glaring at the unmarred world beyond the Distortion with hate.

A ballooned and ribbed white collar separated the bell from the medusa, and four pale veiny petals drifted below the blue horror in swaying motions.

The bell alone measured a jaw-dropping forty meters in circumference, and the medusa stretched on for another thirty meters beyond that.

But the oral arms writhing from the tattered medusa were reaching out in a staggering sixty meters of length.

Now I knew that Jellicent could get big...

 _-But I never knew that they could get that big._

The Distortion rift collapsed in on itself, and the spectral coup of Sinnoh was released from its black prison.

Typhon raised itself into the sky, undulating its body in slow rolling motions, ascending towards the Pit's horizon with a marine grace. Once Typhon had floated its mass free from the confines of the Pit, the medusa fanned outwards, concealing the heavens with Typhon's size alone. The medusa's spread covered such an expansive area, that the evening sunlight was eclipsed by Typhon's veritable scale before the warming solar rays even touched the Pit.

We were looking up at the biggest nightmare the world had ever known, our minds simply incapable of digesting this ludicrous scene. Typhon's alien form and supernatural existence drowned the entire Pit in a blood chilling dread.

Typhon didn't even look like a mon.

It didn't even look possible.

That Ghost looked like something from a completely different world.

Typhon moaned in that horrid voice again, ignoring the stunned Cradily beneath his shadow.

Then the oral arms spread wide-

-And the medusa's core bloomed out like a rotting lily, revealing Typhon's bizarre maw.

No.

That wasn't a mouth.

It was a hole-

-That led straight into the watery depths of hell.

Typhon made a sound.

But not a sound known to man.

A horrifying sound.

It was a concerto of the Distortion's chorus and Typhon's cry.

The deafening slurp of water being sucked down a drain.

The dying moan of some oceanic monstrosity.

And the gurgling rumble of Typhon's loathing and malice.

The Pit began to fill. Shadows were summoned forth from the stone walls and the sandy floor, all of which rose to take upon smokey three dimensional forms. The summoned miasma rippled in the dry air with the likeness of ink drops diffusing and clouding into clear water. Typhon was reshaping the terra milieu into a design more closely resembling his own preferences.

It was no longer Brock's Pit.

Typhon was turning the Gym's earthen ring into a Distortion lake.

And everyone in the Pit was trapped by the stone walls when the miasma levels began to rise.

Brock didn't waste a moment of his life.

Another pokeball released its occupant, and an Aerodactyl bore Brock to safety on its leathery thirty meter wingspan before the tide even licked his toes.

We weren't so lucky.

Peacoat and I grabbed the two shocked kids and backpedalled against the wall with them clutched tightly in our arms.

The cloudy shadows had just spilled over the ledge, and the Loft was filling with the Distortion's warped mockery of water.

If that shit even touched us…

 _-We were dead._

Just another group of casualties for TH's track record.

Just four more souls lost to the Distortion's Prophet.

The miasma drowned the first row of benches.

Then it rose past the second.

It stopped just short of the third.

 _Leaving us just two rows of cover from the misty white hands reaching from the shadowy wakes._

We weren't even watching the battle between TH's Typhon and Brock's Cradily.

We were watching the shoreline, just waiting for those hands to stop wringing and beckoning…

-And to start grabbing and pulling us under the miasma.

It wasn't until Typhon released a descending constellation of broken blue flames that we were able to address the confrontation with our shaken perceptions.

The Distortion's decaying fire fell on Brock's Cradily with a loud wailing of human tongues.

Brock's Cradily could withstand submersion in the miasma due to its aquatic constitution, but the raining stars conjured up by Typhon was not recorded in the prehistoric photoautotroph's expansive roster of inherent tolerances.

Nothing alive appreciates being burned by Ghostfire.

Those flames didn't erupt in a flash of brilliant light and heat, or even engulf the rocky weed in flames.

They worked much more slowly than that.

Cradily was cursed. Rotting flames smoldered across her shape, rising and falling in blue flares from beneath her hardened cuticle.

That fire wasn't burning Cradily's exterior-

 _-It was cooking her from the inside out._

Brock recalled his mineral reed, before Typhon's next attack could finish her off. Brock's Cradily was benched and removed from the match, if only to save her from the consequences of TH's unrestricted challenge.

There TH stood, the sole living thing in the lake, untouched by the apparitions inundating Typhon's cistern.

Looking calmly up at his azure mothership, arms casually folded and a pleasant smile playing on his lips.

TH was slaying Championship mon like it was an amusing pastime.

He didn't have a single concern worth expression, despite the risks associated with his unrestricted match.

Why would TH even care about his Ghosts?

Brock couldn't kill them.

The Gym Leader hadn't even managed to scratch one yet.

Brock was forced to engage TH and Typhon from the indigo wings of his Aerodactyl, now that his Pit was submerged beneath the miasma.

Brock was two mon out.

He'd used one of his three substitutions.

His opponent had claimed the field, without forfeiting a single asset in the maiming.

Now Brock needed to make a mark, before the riptide of Typhon dragged his Duo-Flame status down into the abyss.

Brock released his legendary trump card.

Even a reclusive Ranger like myself recognised that ancient bipedal figure, that scuffed trilobita carapace, and that massive pair of finely honed sickles.

Lithe, The Harvest Dancer.

Brock's star Kabutops.

-The mon that had single handedly shredded through Bruno's entire Elite Four Championship team last season to earn Brock his second Flame.

In comparison to most of Brock's Championship mon, Lithe wasn't particularly large.

He was even shorter than Brock.

-But those man-sized sickles and and those sleek razored plates were married to a graceful analogue.

The Harvest Dancer.

The Riverborn Reaper.

Lithe, the Primordial Danseur.

And Typhon had provided Lithe with his crucial theatrical environment.

A reservoir of fluid.

Brock's Kabutops breached the surface of the miasma with his silent plunge.

Lithe took off in a circular descent, orbiting around Typhon in the Distortion lake at a speed of roughly forty-three knots.

 _That Kabutops was fucking fast._

Typhon released another moan, and Distortion flames formed at the red tips of his oral feathers.

Brock roared a command, and Lithe put down another eruption of speed, juking in his revolution in order to evade the seeking flames of Typhon. The flames congregated in a cluster, moving on intercept with Lithe's orbit.

That Kabutops dodged every single one of them like it was child's play.

Lithe was displaying the agility and grace that had earned him his status as a legend.

Brock was pulling out all of the stops.

He wanted his Pit back.

Typhon conjured up another volley of flames, but Brock was finished with the defensive tactics.

The evasion antics had provided enough time for Lithe to procure the information that he needed.

Brock and Lithe were preparing for an assault.

While dodging every incoming flame, Lithe's sickles had been vibrating at micro oscillations, using the miasma as a sonic medium for calibration. Lithe was trying to gauge the physical parameters of Typhon's resonant frequency, all for augmenting the slicing capabilities of the Kabutop's cleaving edge.

Now that the fine tuning was adequately calculated, Lithe's pulsating sickles could rend Typhon's physiology at the molecular level.

Not every Kabutops had an ear for music.

It was the skill that made Lithe so proficient.

-And it was why they called him the Harvest Dancer.

Lithe jettisoned himself out of the Distortion lake-

-Both elbows pressed up against his abdomen, sickles protruding below him with the edges facing up.

-And the Riverborn Reaper tore through Typhon like a prehistoric bullet.

Lithe was already angling his follow-up upon reentry into the lake-

-While the mothership Typhon deflated and descended.

Lithe's next strike cut half of Typhon's medusa clean off of the falling monster-

-And the blinding subsequent blow split open Typhon's bell when Lithe's trajectory met its completion.

Lithe.

Watching him battle was less of spectating a cage match, and more of observing a ballet.

They called him a danseur for a reason.

Typhon was finished. The seemingly uncontestable nightmare had finally met its match.

-But one look at TH's smirk told us otherwise.

The salvo of Distortion flames intercepted Lithe on the fourth hewing bout, forestalling the raize of Typhon.

Lithe returned to the miasma, roasting with an internal fire.

-And a halo rift surrounded the severed Ghost.

The shadows and hands born from the miasma rushed forth to embrace their fallen master. Typhon disappeared into a blackened cosmic orb, compressing the abomination's mass down into a third of its original size.

Then the halo rift dissipated with the suddenly expanding cosmic orb, and the shadows withdrew back into the miasma.

The orb ruptured in an interdimensional shockwave.

Revealing Typhon.

Full scaled.

Unsullied.

The halo rift had undone all of Lithe's clever blade work.

TH didn't command a host of primeval spirits.

He was the architect behind a congress of heathen gods.

Typhon released a new roar, and the Distortion lake trembled at its master's voice.

A fresh element was added to the Distortion seep, as all the world grew darkened.

A night so thick that it defied light's existence invaded the Pit with a sudden tide.

-And the cries of the Distortion could be heard as though from a distance.

 _We were all trapped within a sub-cell of the nightmare realm._

The only light within this abyss was Typhon's hundreds of flashing red eyes, and the blue flames sizzling out of Lithe.

A sudden nebula of luminescent violet mist formed, filling the weeping dark with an eerie aurora.

Then the entire cloud of violet haze converged and imploded around the suspended Lithe.

The blue flames eating Lithe from within turned black-

-And Brock's legendary reaper crackled and burned away into the Distortion with an agonized scream.

With the same moan that had heralded its arrival, Typhon cast off the unhallowed abyss, and gave way to the sallow light of day.

And Typhon stood alone with TH in the Pit.

There was nothing left of Lithe.

Not even ashes.

Brock's Aerodactyl flew over TH, and something white descended from the strafing mon at the turn in its pass.

It fell slowly, almost indolent in its downwards sway.

-Then Brock's sweat towel landed at TH's feet.

We of the Loft had forgotten that this was a League match.

Who could fault us for that?

We had just played witness to a vision of the world's end.

But that white towel summoned us back into the setting with its simple connotation.

-Brock had forfeited the match.

TH waved his hand again, and the sea of whispering miasma sank beneath the sand. Typhon's colossal form darkened with the shadows, as the Distortion bore him silently away.

The real world embraced us in all of its glorious warmth and light, the sublime sensations inspired by its return seemed almost new and unreal to those of us in Loft.

The Aerodactyl touched down before TH; as a gasping and weeping Brock fell from his mount's shoulders.

The two men just stared at each other in that gods forsaken battleground, neither regressing from their respective demeanors.

Then TH rotated on the balls of his feet, connecting his heels in a click, while his left arm fell loosely to his side in time with the clapping of his right fist against his left collar.

-Before The Devil of Kalos deftly extended his right fist at shoulder level towards Brock, displaying the salute of the Kalosian Royal Guard.

With the parting formality addressed, TH turned on a heel, and sauntered his way out of the Pit without even speaking a word.

Leaving Brock to mourn for his ruined Championship team.

And leaving those of us still sane within the Loft to dread the coming night.

 **.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.**

…

 **Novice Rank:** Denoted by a green rim around their Trainer's License, Novice rank Trainers are virtual beginners to the League competition. The vast majority of 'Challenger's Rights' are denied to Novice ranked Trainers due to their inexperience with League Codes and Species Clauses. Novice ranked Gym Battles limit both the challenger and the Gym Leader to a grand total of three mon, three substitutions, and the most extensive list of Species Regulations.

 **Intermediate Rank:** The immediate Trainer rank following Novice, Intermediate Licenses are rimmed in blue. Intermediate rank comes in two stages:

 **Intermediate-One:** Awarded to a Trainer who has earned two Gym Badges through League certified competition. Beyond being recognised for higher levels of competition, Intermediate-One Trainers are still denied the vast majority of 'Challenger's Rights' for the same reasons Novice Trainers are. Adjusted Species Regulations grant Intermediate ranked Trainers a higher tolerance for competitive mon species.

 **Intermediate-Two:** Awarded to a Trainer who has earned three Gym Badges through League certified competition. The Intermediate-Two ranked Trainers secure the first set of 'Challenger's Rights' for displaying an understanding and adherence to the League Code Species Clauses. The roster of applicable mon species in Intermediate-Two competition is expanded, allowing for more powerful mon to be deployed in League certified competition.

One of the first 'Challenger's Rights' secured by Intermediate-Two ranked Trainers is additional Gym challenge options. Most notably, Intermediate-Two ranked Trainers can request Major ranked Gym challenges in order to further expand the roster of applicable mon-species to that of a Major ranked Gym challenge.

 **Major Rank:** The immediate Trainer rank following Intermediate-Two, Major Licenses are rimmed in red. Awarded to a Trainer who has earned five Gym Badges through League certified competition. Full access to the 'Challenger's Rights' is granted to a Major ranked Trainer. The roster of applicable mon species in Major competition is dramatically expanded, allowing for most species of mon to be deployed in League certified competition. Major ranked Gym Battles limit both the challenger and the Gym Leader to a grand total of four mon, and three substitutions.

 **Premiership Rank:** The immediate Trainer rank following Major, Premiership Licenses are rimmed in white. Awarded to a Trainer who has earned seven Gym Badges through League certified competition. All Species Restrictions are removed from Premiership competition, though the Pit-Point system is now implemented. Major ranked League certified competition limits Premiership Trainers to a grand total of 300 Pit-Points for determining their League registered Premiership teams.

A species of mon possessing the competition equivalency of a Pidgey decreases the Pit-Point's total count by 25 points.

A species of mon possessing the competition equivalency of a Butterfree decreases the Pit-Point's total count by 50 points.

A species of mon possessing the competition equivalency of a Vileplume decreases the Pit-Point's total count by 75 points.

A species of mon possessing the competition equivalency of a Arcanine decreases the Pit-Point's total count by 100 points.

A species of mon possessing the competition equivalency of a Dragonite decreases the Pit-Point's total count by 150 points.

Premiership Trainers can utilize anywhere from two to six mon in League certified competitions, the number of applicable mon is determined by the Pit-Point system.

An example:

A Premiership Trainer with six Butterfrees effectively drains their entire reservoir of Pit-Points, but maxes out their team's roster limit by utilizing weaker species of mon.

A Premiership Trainer with two Dragonites effectively drains their entire reservoir of Pit-Points, but maxes out their team's power potential by limiting the size of their team's roster.

The Pit-Point system was designed to test Quantity versus Quality, and a Premiership Trainer with six Butterfrees can legitimately challenge a Premiership Trainer with only two Dragonites in recognised League certified competition.

Championship Gym challenges can be requested from Premiership Trainers, which effectively revokes the Pit-Point system.

 **Championship Rank :** The immediate Trainer rank following Premiership, Championship Licenses are rimmed in gold. Awarded to a Trainer who has earned eight Gym Badges through League certified competition. All Species Restrictions and the Pit-Point System are removed.

Championship Trainers use only the strongest species of mon in League certified competition.

Most League Codes are unobserved in Championship ranked competition. The remaining League Codes can be removed altogether by declaring unrestricted format.

There are absolutely no League enforced limits in unrestricted Championship ranked competition. Only the strongest mon and cleverest Trainers can survive in sustained unrestricted Championship ranked competition.

Unrestricted format is generally declared as a formality, given that the fatality rate of Championship mon is considered excessively high.

Declaring unrestricted format effectively frees both participants from legal action being pursued by either party upon the death of a Championship mon.

Championship ranked matches remove all roster limitations from the participants, effectively allowing a grand total of six mon to be used in League certified competition, yet the three substitutions limit remains applicable.

 **League Finalist:** The immediate Trainer rank following Championship, League Finalist Licenses are rimmed in platinum. Awarded to a Trainer who has earned eight Gym Badges through League certified competition, survived the Victory Road Trial, and who have successfully passed the qualifying round in the League Seasonal Finals.

The final restriction pertaining to the limit of substitutions is removed from the League Seasonal Finals, otherwise the same formula that is applied in the Championship ranked matches is also applied in the League Seasonal Final matches.

Unrestricted format in the League Seasonal Finals is enforced by League Code.

 **League Flame(s):** A new five tiered-system of rank is added to a League Finalist's License upon defeating one member of the League's Elite Four. After a participant determined quota of Finalist matches have been won, a League Finalist can call one member of the Elite Four to a challenge. If the League Finalist proves victorious against their first Elite Four challenge, another bout of Finalist matches ensues, until a certain quota of remaining Finalists have been defeated. Upon completion of the second quota of Finalists, the quota victor can challenge another member of the Elite Four. The process repeats until the quota victor is defeated, or every member of the Elite Four has been bested by a quota victor. Upon securing their Fourth Flame, a quota victor can replace any member of Elite Four at their discretion, or challenge the League Champion for the Fifth Flame and the League Throne.

 **Gym Leader :** Any League Finalist can apply to the League for the role of Gym Leader. The only stipulation for succession is that a Trainer must defeat a current Gym Leader in the post-finals of League Seasonal Finals, and they must utilize a team recognised by the League as a 'Type specialist team,' or what is more commonly known as a 'mono team'. A bare minimum of five Pokemon on a mono team must share the same species-Type index. The sixth mon, or 'the wildcard' can be of any species-Type, and is generally reserved for a species-Type that counters any and all weakness shared by the the mono team's declared specialty species-Type.

Upon defeating a previous Gym Leader, the new Gym Leader inherits their predecessor's Gym and station, though the Gym's species-Type specialization will reflect the declared species-Type utilized in the defeat of the previous Gym Leader. Due to the mono team requirement, few challenges are presented for Gym Leader succession. The 1075th Gym Congress of Indigo: Kanto Division is comprised of Brock Aissatou, Misty Willows, Lieutenant 'Jackie' Surge, Erika Valhallen, Janine Kurosawa, Sabrina Jahanshah, Blaine Breitbarth, and Giovanni Delimonto.

 **Elite Four:** Quad-Flame former League Finalists who stand highest amongst all Trainers as the best of the best; save for the League Champion. Elite Four members commonly rotate or are replaced at the end of every League Seasonal Finals. Due to the constant Elite Four rotation, most long standing members wield mono teams in the event of succession. Once ousted from the Elite Four, any prior member can challenge a Gym Leader in the post-finals for a League recognised station, consequently justifying the frequency of mono teams utilized in the Elite Four. The 1,075th Elite Four of Indigo is comprised of Koga Kurosawa, Bruno Endfield, Agatha Poe, and Lorelai Nikitin.

 **League Champion:** The League Finalist who secured the quota victor rank four times, defeated the entirety of the Elite Four, crushed the opposing final quota victor, before challenging the League Champion-

-And then proved victorious against the most skilled and most powerful Trainer recognised by the League.

The Reigning Champion replaces the former Champion, who at that point, must wait for the next League Seasonal Finals to challenge and defeat the newly formed League in order to reclaim their title, or alternatively, challenge a Gym Leader in the post-finals to secure a station recognised by the League.

League Champions are rarely challenged by the Quad-Flame League Finalists, for the simple reason of that Fifth-Flame's connotation.

The Champion of Champions. The Alpha of Alphas. The King of Kings.

Only the most powerful and most intelligent Trainers can even hope to defeat the legendary League Champion.

The League Champion's reputation of prowess, the exhaustion and sacrifices experienced in the Quad-Flame's ascent, and the risk of losing everything thus far accrued, save for a decorated License; is all sufficient reason enough to ward off any challengers for the League Throne.

The Champions survived the very same League gauntlet that is imposed upon their challengers.

The Champions bested the Elite Four in due process through trial of combat.

...And the Reigning Champion defeated a former Champion at their prime to top it all off.

The League Champion is the highest rank achievable in the League, and its merits and privileges are countless.

There are currently three active Penta-Flame League Champions, both reigning and former, recognised in the Indigo League Registry.

The Reigning Indigo League Champion, Lance M. Drakengard.

 _AKA: "The Dragon King."_

The Former Indigo League Champion, Blaine L. Breitbarth.

 _AKA: "The Ignis King."_

The Indigo League Champion who served prior to Blaine L. Breitbarth, and the only League Champion to have ever retired from the Indigo League before death or defeat, Samuel J. Oak.

 _AKA: "The Sage King."_

 _ **Indigo League Registry Update:**_ The Reigning Kalos Champion has been confirmed actively competing within the Indigo League Registry. Due to to the Station-Recognition-Agreement of the _**I.L.A.**_ _(International League Association)_ The Kalosian League Champion's rank is also recognized and recorded here.

The Reigning Kalos League Champion, Theron V. Halcyon.

 _AKA: "The Eidolon King."_

…

 _ **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Taking the "Pocket" out of "Pocket Monsters…"_

 _...One chapter at a time._


	7. Chapter VI: A Confluence of Fates?

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 **The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero**

 _Written by,_

 **Vile M.F. Slanders**

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 **V**

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" _ **...Aequa Lege Necessitas Sortitur Insignes Et Imos... (...Fate, by an impartial law, is allotted both to the conspicuous and the obscure…)"**_ _Quintus Horatius Flaccus, a Roman lyric poet, Born December 8th, 65 BC. Died November 27th, 8 BC._

 _...Yet his words live on..._

 **-v-**

 **Chapter VI: A Confluence of Fates?**

"It's confirmed. Halcyon has gone rogue."

"...Son of a bitch. _I should have listened to Oscarin…_ "

"Sir, the League reports state that there were witnesses to the event, other than Brock Aissatou and the Pewter City Gym staff."

"Do we have any names?"

"Most aren't worth mentioning, but _this one_ caught our attention."

"...-"

"-Not possible."

"The League registry confirmed his presence during the match."

"Does Halcyon know?"

"That we don't know. With his Ghosts, anything is possible."

"This can't be a coincidence. They were supposed to be playing on two completely separate game boards! Why did Halcyon jump into the Indigo League? Was he planning this from the start?!"

"He may have ulterior motives. He is a Halcyon after all."

"What is he doing, announcing his presence through the fucking Indigo League?! Now the whole fucking world is going to find out that we offered asylum to a global war criminal!"

"..."

"Why would Halcyon go into the League?"

"Sir?"

"...This is Theron Halcyon… If he wanted the world to know about his presence in Indigo, then he could have just made a scene massacring Pewter's population… Why broadcast it through the League?"

"...?"

"...He knows."

"Should we recall the White King?"

"...This jeopardizes everything… But if Halcyon did know, then why didn't he just kill the White King?"

"...Sir?"

"...Unless he doesn't know…"

"...Are we going to scrap Operation: Wounded Hearts?"

"..."

"Sir?"

"...No."

"..."

"...We still have the upper-hand. We can't do anything about our loose cannon, Halcyon… Not yet, anyways. Have we ascertained the whereabouts of the White King?"

"We have our field operatives scouring Pewter City for him now."

"What about Alexandria?"

"Alexandria's last transmission was cut off by Distortion interference. If the White King was exposed to a heavy enough dose of the Distortion's scream, then it might have forced Alexandria into stasis."

"...Son of a bitch. What about the Black King?"

"Halcyon disappeared after his match with Brock. We have the Whitetails combing the Distortion for a lead, but Halcyon knows his way around that hell better than anyone else alive. If we do find anything, it will more than likely just be a false trail."

"So our two Kings are MIA?"

"Correct."

"...What is Halcyon trying to do?"

"We have our Analysts digging through the archives. We're trying to establish a motive. But for all we know, Halcyon's Ghosts may have finally claimed his sanity. He could be going wildcard."

"No, Halcyon is up to something. He set us up, and now he's playing us all for fools. We're _grasping at shadows_... I never should have approved his request for asylum. I should have supported Arturia…"

"Speaking of Arturia, the Kalosian King made contact with Oscarin about an hour ago, around the same time that the Indigo League announced Halcyon's presence in Kanto."

"Adamus Oscarin? Why would the King of Kalos contact Indigo's High Justiciar?"

"Assassination. King Arturia had to have known which office Halcyon went through for securing his asylum."

"...Oh fuck."

"Sir… Are we looking at a possible war with Kalos?"

"Get on the horn. I want an audience with Arturia ASAP. We need to figure this Halcyon situation out."

"We've already attempted to establish contact with the King of Kalos. Arturia shut us down the instant the Crown found out where Halcyon disappeared to."

"Is this what he's trying to do?! Start a war between Indigo and Kalos?!"

"Halcyon? It's feasible. Our Analysts are researching the possibility."

"Why? He turned down the Kalosian Throne. Halcyon had a chance at killing Arturia and claiming the Crown… And he walked away from it… How would instigating a war between Indigo and Kalos benefit Halcyon? He has us running in circles, damnit!"

"Sir… What do we do now?"

"...-"

"-...We cover for Arturia. The High Justiciar died from a tragic accident-"

"-A Halcyon Shadow ganked Oscarin in full view of the public offices. We can't cover up a Distortion rift appearing out of nowhere and dropping itself right in the middle of Indigo's Supreme Judicature-"

"-THEN MAKE SOMETHING UP! WE ARE TRYING TO AVOID A WAR WITH KALOS!"

"Yes sir!"

"...-"

"-...Pull the Whitetails out of the Distortion. We're not going to find the Black King in his hell. I want field operatives on the ground hunting for his ass. If anyone comes into contact with the Black King, they'll talk about it. Try as he might, Halcyon isn't inconspicuous in the sunlight. And he's not running from us. He doesn't have any reason to fear us... And we still need the Black King."

"If the field operatives do manage to locate Halcyon, what is their prerogative?"

"...Establish contact. I want answers, and Halcyon isn't going to give us any. So we are operating off of any hints that he drops."

"I'll disclose the directive at once. Is there anything else that I should tell the field operatives?"

"...-"

"-...Tell them to locate Bastard ASAP. We may need to fall back on the White King if Halcyon keeps playing his game in the League."

"Yes sir."

"Wire me a feed to the Analysts. I need to-"

"-Sir!"

"What is it, Looker?"

"This passport just came in from Vermilion City's Sea-Port-of-Entry Office. Do you think it has any correlation with Halcyon?"

"...?!-"

"-How the hell did she get out of Kalos?!"

"House Le-Faye must have smuggled her out of Arturia's custody. That, or even House Halcyon. House Halcyon is the most likely suspect. They have the means necessary to move their Shadows anywhere unnoticed, and not all of the Halcyons are loyal to the current Crown. The Halcyons might be trying to win their King back-"

"-I want the Watchdogs following her every movement! She had to have know about Halcyon's whereabouts beforehand! She couldn't have crossed two oceans in an hour! If she's looking for Halcyon, then something else might be going on! We have a possible lead. We are following it to the Black King."

"Yes sir."

"Get your ass in Vermilion, Looker. I want you on this one personally."

"Right away, sir."

"...-"

"-...This is going somewhere… This is leading up to something. Something that we didn't anticipate..."

…

We all stood clustered together outside of the Pewter City Gym.

Just the four of us, completely disregarding each other's personal space.

The ginger's heels were practically on my toes, and the lass was standing shoulder to shoulder with me and Peacoat.

I don't know how long we stood there, just soaking up the normal world.

None of us even remember the trip through the Pit access tunnel.

There was only one thing running through our brains, torturing us with memories.

 _Pariah…_

 _Typhon…_

 _TH…_

 _They had almost killed us._

 _We had been held captive in a Distortion sub-cell._

 _Why the hell hadn't we started mutilating ourselves yet?_

 _How were we still sane?_

"...What do we do now?" Peacoat's voice was breaking from desperation and shock.

At least he could find his voice.

It took me two unintelligible gurgles to locate mine.

"Follow me." Grunted one very shaken Ranger.

I dragged the other three to a grungy restaurant in the downtown sector. The place looked like the sort of establishment that derived the ingredients for its cuisine right out of the alleyway.

In short, it was a dive that served its customers dysentery topped with botulism.

Good thing we weren't going there for the grub.

Ol' peacoat caught right on to my line of thinking when the waiter finally arrived to offer the dive's beverages.

Together, we ordered one of every alcoholic drink on the list. It didn't matter if it was whiskey or wine, we wanted it served by the pint.

The waiter got a little surprised when he asked the two sickly kids for their preferred beverage.

Peacoat and I just repeated our orders for the kids.

Fuck underage drinking.

Heavy suppressants are about the only thing that can ward off the aftereffects of exposure to a Distortion scream. We all needed to get blind drunk as soon as possible if we wanted a prayer of forgetting the horror that we had just played witness to.

Despite the less than homely settings that the four of us had elected to get inebriated in, we still drew a lot of pissed off looks. Peacoat and I ushered the choking kids into hastening their consumption, less the police show up and book us all for a misdemeanor. So it came to be, that Peacoat and I guided the two stumbling children to their designated homes, and then he and I fled both the seedy restaurant and the distraught guardians. We'd done our best for the ginger and the lass, but I did not envy their parents in the least.

Trying to calm those two panicking kids down enough to get them to leave a well-lit room was going to be a heartbreaking experience for their families, and likely one that take would both counseling and time. Hopefully the trauma wouldn't manifest itself in some kind of psychosis. Getting sunk into a Distortion sub-cell can fuck with even the most rational of minds.

And after having been in one myself?

I can personally attest that there is just something _wrong_ with that place that registers on the primal level.

 _There's just something not right about that infinite empty hell._

Now that the kids had been returned to their respective homes, both me and the silent Peacoat needed to take care of ourselves.

Which meant that neither one of us was gonna leave the other anytime soon.

 _Never leave a man behind._

In the Ranger Corps, that phrase generally means, 'Make sure that your brothers are dead before you leave their bodies behind to be eaten by the mon.'

But in this situation, it meant that while one set of eyes were closed, the other set of eyes were wide open and watchful.

In hindsight, it was kind of funny that I didn't get Peacoat's name until two whole days later-

-But despite the delayed exchange in formalities, we still got a room together in a hotel.

...Don't say it.

-It was nothing like that.

Anyways, I would've preferred violent sodomy over what Peacoat and I put ourselves through in that hotel room.

Every light went on, the open doors were adjusted and the furniture was relocated so as to minimize the shadows that they cast, mattresses were leaned up against the walls at angles parallel opposing light sources, our small mon came out in force, and the hotel's service counter was hailed with a request for every alcoholic beverage provided by the establishment.

I volunteered for the first watch, while Peacoat drank himself into a coma. Then it was eighteen hours of drying eyelids and numbing senses for this Ghost-fearing Ranger, before Peacoat woke up for his end of the shift.

Neither one of us really knew what we were going to do if a Ghost did decide to show up. Our best counter against an invading shade was to dispel its physical form, but even then…

All of our preparations amounted to nothing more than an obvious security blanket.

-And truthfully... We'd take whatever faux comfort that we could afford, just to stave off the madness born in terror.

…

"Ow."

That was all I could say when I opened my eyes. The warm light of the hotel room was antagonizing my senses.

"...You awake?" A groggy Peacoat croaked.

"Unfortunately… Oh, my fucking head…" I placed a hand over my good eye.

"Are you sane?" Peacoat asked. I coughed.

"Well, I am a Ranger, aren't I?" Vauban worked her way under the crook of my elbow.

"That's a 'no,' then." Peacoat snorted.

"What about you?" I asked, throwing Vauban off of me.

"I haven't started cutting myself or seeing things that aren't there yet, so… I think I'm sane." Peacoat actually sounded humorous.

"What day is it?" I grumbled, lifting my stiff frame off of the floor.

"Almost seven pm, two days after the Gym." Peacoat answered.

"Crap… I need food." I grunted, staggering across to the bathroom.

"I'll call the front desk. I'll have them deliver whatever they serve here." Peacoat offered.

"-Fuck that. I'm going out as soon as I smell halfway decent." I was in a ripe mood. But a hangover and a sleep-kinked neck will do that to you, even without the empty stomach.

Fifteen minutes later, this Ranger was clean-cut and washed, suited up in a fresh uniform, field kit strapped to his shoulders, mon returned to their appropriate Pokeballs, and ready to leave the somewhat sour smelling hotel room behind.

"Are you coming with me?" I addressed the peacoat with an impatient tone. He shuddered when he looked over to the room door.

"What's your name?" I asked, watching the peacoat hesitate over leaving the room.

"...Derek Browlowski." The peacoat answered. I sighed, and sat down on the floor across from him.

"Okay, Derek. We've been holed up in this hotel for almost two days now. If a Ghost wanted to haunt us, I think we'd be feeling some kind of paranormal activity already. And that creep from the Gym has probably skipped town by now. You and I are both scared out of our wits, but we both appear to have maintained our sanity. Now a sane individual would realize the futility in remaining locked up in a hotel room. That, and our wallets aren't bottomless. So we have to man up, and get the hell out of here before our paranoia really does drive us insane." I offered my coaching to Derek in a fashion that appealed to his Analyst rationality. It would be a shame if this Analyst wasted himself away in this hotel room.

But I had not revealed an even more prevalent motive for my want of Derek's action.

The truth was…

...I _really_ didn't want to step outside alone.

Derek swallowed hard, before he tightly closed his eyes and hugged his knees while rocking back and forth.

"...Derek. We have to live. This isn't living. Now come on." I slapped the side of Derek's head with an open palm, jarring him out of his anxiety.

"I'm starving. I want junkie food and soft drinks. It's gonna be a while before I can even look at a bottle of booze again." I stood up, dragging Derek up by his peacoat's shoulder as I did so.

"If you don't walk yourself out, then I'll kick your ass through the door, Analyst." That was an unsoftened promise from the Fucking Bastard. A Ranger's threat had best be taken seriously, and Derek was wise enough to heed it. Needless to say, my nervous compatriot scurried ahead of me to the door.

In the absence of the spirits, an irritated Ranger poses a genuine need for concern.

…

That first breath of Pewter's evening air tasted like salt and honey in my stale mouth. Judging from Derek's deep intakes of breath, he too was sampling the clean city air. The two of us stood there in front of the hotel's pavilion, just soaking in the descending sun and fading sky. This was what we needed. This was what we had been missing.

Beautiful earth.

"Well I'm feeling better already. You?" I elbowed Derek after a good five minutes of standing had passed. Derek actually managed to chuckle.

"Hell yeah. Now let's get some grub before the sun sets." Derek returned my gesture with his own elbow. I decided to pass on the presented excuse to escalate and slug Derek in the gut, seeing as my constitution favored the promise of a hot and greasy meal.

We found a grillhouse easily enough. Derek ordered a stack of smoked ribs, while I demanded that the bloodiest and largest burger on the menu be outfitted with every spicy condiment and every cheese available.

Did I want bacon added to that order?

How is that even a question?

Yes, cover that mess in bacon, and then drown my burger in the grease. Keep pouring on the sauce until it looks unappetizing.

Then add some pepperoni.

Derek got himself one hell of a laugh when I placed my order. True to my Ranger disposition, I wasn't going to wait for a waitress. Talking over the greeter's protests was second nature for the Fucking Bastard.

Just make it easy for the both of us, and write it down now.

I pay you for a service, not for a wait.

"You really have a way with people, don't you Ranger?" Derek snorted when we were seated.

"Give me what I want, and nobody gets butthurt." I replied. The uniform was back on. No doubts or inhibitions were betrayed in my disciplined countenance.

"Have you ever considered that a more… civil approach might achieve better results?" Derek was plying his Analyst trade on my mannerisms.

I had growing a respect for this League aficionado, so I didn't immediately bite his head off for questioning my less than appropriate social etiquette. Besides, an Analyst would never be satisfied with a simple 'No'.

"Efficiency is my goal, Four-Badges. I'll enforce that goal in any interaction that I partake in." I hoped that a rational response would shut him up, but Derek smelled a debate in my logic.

"You're forgetting to factor human animosity in such interactions. An unwilling servitor may not provide the most efficient resource." Derek started his logic train's engine.

"Then they're gonna get an earful from me." I closed the debate with my obstinate retort. Derek rubbed his eyes with a chuckle.

"I take it that you don't like people?" Derek mirthfully asked.

That paved the way for a pause from me.

"...I don't think that I would say that. I think that humanity is a beautiful thing. I want it to endure and expand. I just… I'm not the best with people." I grunted. Derek looked at me quizzically.

"Why do you want humanity to grow even more? Don't you think that we've come far enough?" Derek posed his question not so much as a personal belief, but more of a counter statement to my own desire.

"We were once the supreme species on this planet, Derek. We once held this world in our palms. We were on the cusp of interplanetary colonization before the Brink appeared. Who knows what humanity could have achieved if the mon had never shown up…" My voice trailed off into a wistful longing. I was sounding hopelessly sophist, but it was a personal passion of mine.

"But you do know what we did to this planet in our expansion, don't you?"

I sighed.

The paradox of my desire.

"We damn near destroyed it." I grumbled.

"So would you support the planet's destruction for humanity's expansion?" Derek didn't phrase his question as an accusation. He seemed genuinely intrigued by this development.

And in all honesty…

I was rather pleased to have finally found a soul who shared and challenged my philosophical pursuits.

"I don't think that wanton destruction is necessary for development. The one good thing to come of the Brink Collapse was a reason for mankind to adapt our behaviors. Post-Brink humanity defeated a Dark Age and reshaped the new world to reflect the old world. Despite the travesties that befell mankind in the post-Brink, we've still held true to the old world values. Sure, from time to time, both the government and technological advancement regressed some, but every dictatorship eventually collapsed when the populace realized that a strong totalitarian government was no longer necessary for the species's endurance. Humanity wasn't broken by the Brink Collapse. We were tested by it, and we became stronger when we triumphed over the chaos. We've used different means to achieve this era of prosperity than the means we utilized in the pre-Brink, but the end result is humanity's expansion and the world's preservation. We are finally beginning to return to our original dominance, though now we are endowed with a sense of responsibility for the well-being of our world." I couldn't believe that I was spilling my guts out to a relative stranger in a public setting. But peacoat had his own skill in dealing with people. It wasn't until he answered my analysis that I realized just how much Derek served as a social polarity to my own civil inadequacies.

"Yet how long do you think it will be before humanity regresses into a selfish animal and seeks to secure their own interests at the expense of the world?"

Derek was referencing human nature.

Strife is our ally.

Contentment our enemy.

History records the best of mankind in eras of discord.

And history records the worst of mankind in eras of peace.

"With a well structured government, and a properly educated population, humanity could curb the beast indefinitely-"

"-Indefinitely? Don't use that word in reference to human nature. You're only detracting from your own thesis with such ignorant terminology."

"Well we have to try something! We know what the problem is, we have the ability to address it, so why couldn't humanity rise above their own nature?"

"It was humanity's attempt to defy nature that almost destroyed the planet in the pre-Brink era. Nature is a balancing act. We can't escape our own nature. Somewhere down the lines, an organization will possess the resources necessary to influence the entirety of humanity back into regression just for the sake of personal gain. Look at the history books. How often has something wonderful been ruined by human selfishness?" Derek asked.

"The Byzantine schism comes to mind. If the leadership of the Roman empire had set aside their political infighting, then a unified Roman nation would never have fallen to the Visigoths. And if the Romans had persisted beyond the Catholic reformation, humanity could have avoided the first Dark Ages altogether." I referenced my favorite ancient culture in my response.

"How about Europe's vengeful Treaty of Versailles damning the Germanic nation into poverty, which bred animosity amongst the German people, leading to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the start of World War II?" Peacoat offered.

"While we're on the subject of World Wars concluding in more wars, it pays to mention that American idiot, Harry Truman. That fucking buffoon practically invited another two wars in Asia, _and_ the Cold War era when he threatened Stalin with the Atomic Bomb. A fucking world leader threatening to nuke another world leader over what was essentially a contest in the ideal form of government? Say what you want about the monster Stalin, but he was a far more capable leader than President Truman. America was the tyrant in that scenario, not Russia." I sounded venomous, and ol'Peacoat could only shake his head with a laugh.

"Well, we got a little side tracked, but we have established humanity's inability to overcome their basic nature, even in times of peace following war. So how would the future world of humanity altruistically cope with their inherent nature?" Derek asked. That one stumped me.

"...I don't really know if that's even possible. Humanity is just a complex animal after all. Survival is still our primary motive in every action. The preservation of the species is the root quantifier in our every behavior, no matter how far flung our behaviors seem from the natural mold." I reasoned. Derek shrugged.

"That thesis could be argued, but I would rather offer an answer to the original question. It may be beneficial for both the world and humanity if we never reclaim our dominant species title. Maybe everything would be better off if humanity just conformed to this new world's standards. There's nothing wrong with a humble existence, Ranger. Our species doesn't need to grow into a cancer again." Derek elaborated, betraying his own beliefs with his softened voice. But just as Peacoat had pointed out the flaws in my beliefs, I was ready to highlight the flaws in his.

"...Maybe it would. But then you are forgetting to factor in basic human nature again. We will establish dominance, or we will go extinct in its pursuit. History shows that the human animal has never settled for less than supremacy. So rather than dream of an impossible utopia, we need to embrace our own chaos, and adapt ourselves to counter its consequences." I replied. Now my response had stumped Derek. It was a long while before either one of us spoke again.

"...Sometimes I hate reality…" Derek groaned, burying his face in his hands. I snorted.

"And that same dissatisfaction is why I'm so short with society. If travesty inspires change, then my goal is to create as much controversy as I possibly can to influence humanity's transition into the ideal dominant species." I confided to ol'Peacoat. He snorted at that one.

"Really? I thought that you were just an ass for the sake of lording your own self-imposed superiority over everyone else." Derek jabbed. I chuckled.

"That too."

Another comfortable silence stretched on following that little jest. Derek and I were content to sip at our beverages and await our meals. Right up until our stomachs voiced their concerns regarding the current issue.

"What the hell is taking our food so long? Did they have to butcher the bloody Tauros for your ribs?" I asked Derek.

"With as long as we've been waiting, it seems more likely that they had to slaughter and smoke a Grumpig's belly cut for your burger." Derek retorted.

"Naw. It's all your fault for not placing your order at the front desk like I did. Give a business establishment an centimeter, and they'll take-" I paused mid sentence when a ringing filled my ears and numbed my senses. The look on my face must have hinted at my sudden discomfort.

"Are you okay?" Derek asked me, curious as to the sporadic change.

"I have to go check something."

That was my voice...

-But I wasn't speaking!

"Check something? Like what?" Derek asked.

"Ranger business. I'll be back momentarily."

Was my mouth was moving in spite of my own will?

 _Something had repressed my self dictation!_

How far did it-?

The sudden bodily rise from my chair answered the incomplete question adequately.

 _I had lost all self dictation._

Something else was controlling me, and I was helpless against it. The academy's mental training procedures proved a useless counter to the sudden cognitive assault. Mentally rehearsing Catullus XVI and contemplating prime numbers did nothing for me.

I didn't know if this was psionic subjugation or spiritual possession.

I hadn't a defense for either.

Had TH's Ghosts returned to reap what they had spared?

I walked right past the front counter in a steady gait. I couldn't even find a foothold to use in order to imply my plight to the casual passersby.

I was completely under something's spell, and my one-way awareness was coming along for the ride. That raised a new question.

Why hadn't my captor simply blacked out my awareness?

Wouldn't it be easier to maintain control if I was unable to rationalize my sudden lack of self dictation?

Across the street and halfway down an alleyway later, I got my answer.

And the identity of my captors.

"Ranger Zane Bastard, I'd like to apologize for the sudden invasion. But discretion in the public sector must be observed. You understand that this is only a precaution to avoid arousing suspicion, should any other eyes witness this meeting, correct?" A gray haired man in a tweed suit informed me. He wasn't alone.

A young hairy faced hippie in a tie dye shirt and cargo shorts stood behind him. A bulky man wearing a peculiar clash of denims and a white turtleneck stood at the tweed's shoulder. His crew cut, dead eyes, and muscle mass hinted at a military background.

And the fourth member of this odd collection was a midget hoodlum equipped with the baggiest assortment of identity concealment punk apparel imaginable. I couldn't even see his face.

Well, I could see his face, but the image failed to register in my conscious mind. I knew that he had a face, and I knew that he was looking right at me, but I couldn't for the life of me process his physical appearance.

"Igor. Let him go." The tweed suit ordered. The hoodlum shrugged, and my self dictation returned in a tingling sensation. Then the psionic short-term memory scrambling ceased, and I could identify the Hoodlum's facial features.

It wasn't a hoodlum.

It wasn't even a human.

The bottomfeeder fishlike face of a Medicham looked up at me from the hood.

"Ranger Bastard, I hope that your faculties are capable of discerning who we represent?" The tweed posed me with a challenge.

Oh, I know who you are, fancy pants.

My blood had already gone cold with the revelation long before you revealed your ugly little Medicham.

" _ACE_." I whispered. The tweed inclined his head.

"Agent Stockholm, Whitetail Division. Or a Headhunter if you prefer the colloquial term."

 _-Oh shit._

 _I was a dead man._

"If you will follow Igor and myself to our safehouse, then the other two agents will join us in due time. We have some questions for you, Ranger. And we hope that you might be able to provide us with some answers."

For a ACE Headhunter, Agent Stockholm wore the tweed well. He was ever so polite in his phrasing.

And not one softened word did anything to comfort me.

"Can I take your silence as consent?" Agent Stockholm asked.

"-I'll come." I choked. The Emboar in a turtleneck snickered.

"Relax kid, we're not going to kill you." The hippie chuckled. The tweed was smiling at me too.

"Take it easy, Ranger. Like I said, all we have is some questions. This isn't an interrogation. Nothing that we will ask you is going to jeopardize your morality. This has everything to do with the recent event at the Pewter City Gym." The tweed informed me.

Okay…

Now I wasn't going to shit my pants.

But I might need a clean pair of undershorts just to be safe.

"Igor, start screening. I don't want anyone to recognize our faces until we get into the safehouse. Agent Denethor, Agent Matusik, give us a fifteen minute lead. Arrive separately in five minute intervals. Igor will cover your approach." Agent Stockholm ordered. His Medicham, Igor, began his mental voodoo, effectively erasing every record of our existence from any bystanders' minds that we came across in the journey to the safehouse.

"Yes sir." The crewcut and hippie answered in unison.

"Sorry Ranger, but you haven't been cleared for the location of ACE's Pewter City HQ. Are you ready?" Agent Stockholm turned to me.

"...Just pinch me when it's over." I grumbled. The other two Agents laughed.

"Igor, wipe the slate." Agent Stockholm ordered with a smile.

And those were the last words I could remember before that Medicham telepathically shutdown my senses and claimed my dictation for himself.

…

A painful twist on my right cheek roused me from the single most pleasant sleep that I had experienced since infancy.

"He said to pinch him when it was over." The military ape chuckled as he released my face from his torquing vice grip.

"Goddamnit, I said a pinch! Not a fucking face-lift!" The Fucking Bastard woke up in a spitting fury. I was sitting on a chair in a surprisingly domestic dining room. White walls, a wooden table and buffet, a carpeted floor, and even an ornamental bowl of fruit replete with matching candlesticks greeted mine eye upon my return to self awareness.

"Holy shit… I expected something a little more…"

"Don't worry. The interrogation equipment is prepped in the basement." Crewcut grinned at me while I struggled to correlate ACE's presence in this tame and homely setting.

"So I'm not going to end up in the basement later? ...Or maybe in a sack out in the Frontier?" I wasn't joking around, and my nervous voice confirmed it. Agent Stockholm took a seat across the table from me.

"As I stated before, Ranger, this is only an inquiry. Not an interrogation, and not an execution. I think that you will be pleased to learn that your tribunal was disbanded following your match with Brock. Although ACE Central did wish for me to stress upon you that any future security leaks perpetrated by your person will be severely punished." Agent Stockholm was every bit as clear cut and proper in the advisory as his tailored tweed suit suggested of his mannerisms.

"So what do you want to know about the freak with the grey eyes?" I asked. Agent Stockholm approved of my intuition.

I knew that ACE wasn't interested in the events of my match with Brock, controversial though it may have been. ACE wanted information pertaining to the walking apocalypse from Kalos.

"Did you establish contact with Theron Halcyon?" Agent Stockholm asked.

"That's his name? Is that what 'TH' stands for?" I asked.

"TH is just an abbreviation of his moniker. The world knows Theron Halcyon more commonly as 'The Hole'-"

"-Cute nickname. Who did he piss off to get that stupid title?" I interjected with a smirk.

Not one of the Agents were laughing at my gibe. If anything, every face in the room darkened.

"I'll assume that you know absolutely nothing about Theron Halcyon?" Agent Stockholm asked in a patient voice.

The smile faded from my face.

"Other than the fact that he's a fucking freak who almost killed me twice, and he's apparently the Reigning Kalos League Champion, no. I don't know a damn thing about him." I admitted. Agent Stockholm drummed his fingers on the table.

"For the sake of a serious discussion, I will enlighten you as to the nature of Theron Halcyon. He is a war criminal. Every nation between Unova and Johto has tried at some point to assassinate Theron Halcyon. Every attempt has failed. The last reported failed assassination attempt was perpetrated by Sinnoh. Did you hear about the 'accident' that killed the Sinnoh Theocracy's entire Parliamentary council little less than a year ago?" Agent Stockholm asked me.

"Yeah, something about a carbon monoxide leak and a faulty alarm system…" My voice trailed off.

Agent Stockholm wasn't suggesting what I thought that he was suggesting…

"That was a cover up. Everyone in Sinnoh and Kalos knows what really happened. And not a soul in either nation wants to discuss it. Theron Halcyon circumnavigated the Sinnoh Theocracy's security detail by utilizing a passage through the Distortion, and then The Devil of Kalos announced his previously unknown presence in Sinnoh by summoning up one his Ghosts to drown the entire Parliament within their own provincial estate. They had no forewarning and no countermeasures in place for Theron's retaliation. While Typhon and Theron filled the Parliamentary Chambers with miasma, his other Ghosts haunted and systematically slaughtered the platoon of Templars that were rallied in the effort of saving Sinnoh's doomed leaders." Agent Stockholm paused and cleared his throat with a cuff over his mouth, before he continued on with his account.

"And then to add spit to a festering wound, Theron Halcyon desecrated Sinnoh's most sacred landmark, Spear Pillar, by having his Ghosts tear open a sustained Distortion rift at the summit of Mount Coronet. The entire peak is now haunted by a variety of malignant wraiths. And if you know anything about the Sinnoh Theocracy's canon… They believe that the Ghosts are demons, so the primeval spirit's presence in Sinnoh's most sacred monument is an inexcusable affront to their religion." Agent Stockholm gave me the abridged account.

Shortened or not, this revelation made my icy skin crawl.

"...One man… _brought down the entire Sinnoh Parliament?_ " I gaped at Agent Stockholm.

"So now you understand why we don't laugh at your jokes regarding Theron Halcyon?" Agent Stockholm sought some form of confirmation from me.

He was going to have to wait.

I was still trying to get past the shock.

"Why was Sinnoh trying to kill TH?" I asked.

The crewcut Emboar behind me cleared his throat.

"That's need to know-"

"-Other than the fact that Theron Halcyon is regarded in Sinnoh as the antichrist for training Ghosts? The King of Kalos but a mark on Theron Halcyon's head. With a huge payout to any nation that could claim it. For the death of Theron Halcyon, King Arturia was willing to part with a seaport archipelago that would have offered any other nation in the world a strategic location for a naval base." Agent Stockholm overrode the turtleneck's assertion.

Apparently ACE had chalked me up on the need-to-know basis.

Which only made me feel even more nervous.

Was I a bigger part of this investigation than a mere informant?

"So why didn't TH kill this King Arturia then? If TH can slaughter a roomful of government officials and get away with it, what's to stop him from killing a single King?" I felt like these people were speaking a different language. None of this seemed real. None of it made sense.

"...The political situation in Kalos is… interesting to say the least. Half of the nation supports King Arturia's claim to the Crown. But the other half would rather have Theron Halcyon on the Throne. It seems that for the sake of national stability, Theron Halcyon has avoided open warfare with the current leadership of Kalos." Agent Stockholm informed me.

Yeah, that cleared everything up.

Half a nation wanted to put a genocidal soulless monster on a Throne and call him King-

 _-Theron Halcyon was a political contender for the Kalosian Crown?!_

" _What is wrong with Kalos?!_ Why would anyone want a freak like TH to be a _King?!_ "

I couldn't believe my ears.

Fortunately, ACE was there to guide me through my sea of political ignorance.

"Because King Allan Arturia is a tyrant whose paranoia and shameless abuse of power has weakened the Kalosian nation, and the Kalosian revolutionaries want that to change. Unlike King Arturia, Theron Halcyon isn't a coward. And he has a reputation for amending problematic situations effectively, if not ethically. A better portion of the Kalosian peasantry and aristocracy desire a strong leader on the Throne, and Theron Halcyon is currently their best defined article. Of course, if Theron Halcyon became King… It would shift the balance of power out from ruling House Arturia and disperse it among the other Noble Houses. The succession of Kings has always provided the Nobility with opportunities to claim some portion of the Crown's power, so the Noble Houses stand to gain influence from the current regime's transition as well." Agent Stockholm laid out the floorplans for such a controversial succession, but Agent Stockholm's foreboding pause and wary demeanor hinted at a more unpleasent motivation for such a revolution.

"...And if you believe certain Kalosian doctrines regarding the destiny of Kings, Theron Halcyon has a ceremonial claim to the Throne that House Arturia hasn't dared match for three centuries. One of Theron Halcyon's Ghosts is a revered symbol of the Kalosian Royalty. In the Kalos of old, these Ghosts were reputed to only serve Kings, or those fated to become Kings. It was traditional at every coronation in the Kalosian Crown's succession for the new King to summon and attempt to Channel this Ghost in a display of his religious legitimacy. A successful Channel proved the successor's ordained right to the Crown. A failed Channel resulted in the beheading of a would-be King. Ruling House Arturia disavowed the practice three-hundred years ago when they lost four of their family members to a single coronation. After House Arturia's controversial political maneuver; that Ghost hasn't been seen on earth since, right up until Theron Halcyon summoned one for himself, and then successfully Channeled the eidolon."

" _Kalos traditionally sanctions a Ghost to elect their Kings?_ ...That's the single best reason that I've ever heard of to justify ridiculing religion. I thought that Kalos was a developed country." My snide voice commented. Agent Stockholm brushed his clean shaven chin with a knuckle.

"Be that as it may, Ranger, Kalos is still a powerful nation. Other than Unova, Kalos represents the single greatest military threat to the Indigo Confederacy. Regardless of our personal views on their religion, it is best that we of Indigo acknowledge and respect the archaic practices of our neighbors, if for no other reason than to avoid hostile confrontations brought about by trivial disputes." Agent Stockholm motioned to the turtleneck.

"Agent Denethor, this conversation has left me parched. Would you pour us some drinks?" Agent Stockholm's cordial order belied his apparent authority.

Agent Stockholm was obviously in charge here, and he was debriefing me on this 'Theron Halcyon'.

Now I'm no fool, and neither is ACE. They wouldn't waste their time telling a lowly Ranger like me these secrets without having a motive in place beforehand.

"So what does this have to do with me?" I asked, fixing a severe eye on Agent Stockholm. He pursed his lips.

"Not to alarm you, Ranger Bastard, but if Theron Halcyon continues to compete within the Indigo League, there is a distinct probability that you and he will eventually cross paths. It is essential to Operation: Wounded Hearts that _you_ become the Indigo League Champion. Not Theron Halcyon."

Okay.

That summed it up.

And don't mind if I do feel alarmed.

That freak is so far above my class that it would be laughable to even consider the two of us competing against one another in the League.

"But for now, Ranger, you don't need to worry about Theron Halcyon. ACE is doing everything in our power to remove him from the League. But in order to succeed on that front, we need every scrap of information that can be procured regarding Theron Halcyon's activities in Kanto. Can you provide us with everything that you've observed or learned in your interactions with Theron Halcyon?" Agent Stockholm asked me.

"-If I may interject, sir? It would be prudent if I was allowed to review Alexandria's condition as soon as possible. Rebooting model P2-04 could take a while. Depending on the amount of damage the Distortion scream dealt to his core diagnostic systems… Alexandria could require a complete overhaul." The hairy hippie moved forwards. Agent Stockholm gestured to me.

"Ranger Bastard, if you would provide Agent Matusik with Alexandria, then one of ACE's AI technicians can begin Alexandria's maintenance immediately." Agent Stockholm requested.

I had completely forgotten about the multi-million Sandz worth of supercomputer lying comatose in my breast pocket. But I'd been terrified witless, drunk, unconscious, or hungover these last two days.

Who could blame me for neglecting my little conniving pain in ass AI?

"Alexandria hasn't responded to my bio-signature. Did the Distortion scream damage him or the Tact. Pad?" I asked as I dug out my Tact. Pad for Agent Matusik.

"The Tact. Pad has a crude circuit breaker installed, so I doubt that the Distortion scream overloaded the circuitry. But Alexandria was never even tested for Distortion exposure. There's no telling what the interdimensional pulses did to his tesseract-lattice programming." Agent Matusik took the Tact. Pad from me, and sat down on the far end of the table, before procuring an aluminum kit from underneath his chair.

"I thought that it was all just EM waves screwing with the circuitry. How could the Distortion scream affect a Porygon?" I asked. Agent Matusik laughed as though I'd said something cute.

"If it was just EM, a Porygon wouldn't be affected. The quantum fluxes generated by a Distortion rift causes temporal discrepancies at the event horizon. These temporal discrepancies effectively warp time and space with gravitational fluctuations, which in turn, simultaneously halts and accelerates the exchange of hexadecimal information processed by sophisticated computations, overlapping and and repeating the same line of code ad nauseam in the span of-"

"-I think that you lost the Ranger at 'hexadecimal information,' Agent Matusik." Agent Stockholm mercifully interrupted the geyser of technobabble spouting from the hairy faced hippie.

"Sorry. I was trained as a field-tech. Not a quantum programmer." I apologized for the glazed look in my eye. Agent Matusik snorted.

"You know how the Distortion scream can render most living organisms insane?" Matusik asked me.

"Yeah, I do. Unfortunately…" I grumbled.

"Well, the same basic principle applies to computers. Everything thus far invented by man operates within the realm of time and space. When the Distortion breaches the realm of time and space, it negates these two natural constants. Humanity perceives this event with a sudden sense of displacement. This displacement triggers an innate panic response in our physiology upon returning to realm of time and space. Sometimes, this panic response collapses our psyche so completely that we are stripped of our rationality permanently. The same is true for computers, which are simply incapable of computing within the absence of time and space. In short, the Distortion scream completely obliterates the sequence of codes that dictate a computer's programmed responses to input stimuli. I.E. The machine dies." Agent Matusik gave me the layman's version.

"So Alexandria is… dead?" I asked, not the least concerned for the fate of my Porygon partner.

"If he is, then one of the advantages of being a computer is mechanical restoration. We have backup copies of Alexandria's quantum logic banks and precoded algorithms. We can fill the empty husk of Alexandria's Tesseract-lattice matrix with a brand new Alexandria model, based entirely off of the old data that developed the original. We hope that Alexandria is still alive though. We lost contact with him shortly after the first Distortion scream that Pariah generated when he tore open the Distortion. Any transmissions that Alexandria attempted to broadcast back to ACE Central during Theron Halcyon's match with Brock could still be stored within his quantum logic banks. That information could be instrumental in tracking Pariah's movements throughout the Distortion. If we can figure out how to follow Theron Halcyon's Ghosts in their realm, then we can have a means of following Theron Halcyon's movements in our realm. We would be stripping The Eidolon King of his shadows using his own Ghosts. So any quantum observations pertaining to Theron Halcyon's Ghosts is an invaluable asset to ACE's search effort. And it looks like our little Alexandria is-" Agent Matusik lingered over the analysis, giving the carbonated beverage laden Agent Denethor a blissfully silent return to the dining room.

"-KIA… Goddamnit." Agent Matusik swore. Lifting what looked like a holocaster from his aluminum kit, Agent Matusik entered a combination on the holocaster's minuscule display.

"Athens, help me out." Agent Matusik grumbled to the holocaster, as the holoport illuminated with a spectrum of photonic beams.

But Athens wasn't a contact of Agent Matusik, stationed within the quantum programming department of ACE Central.

Athens was Alexandria's little sister, a much later Porygon2 model.

Alexandria was model four of fifteen from the original Porygon2 project.

Athens was model nine of fifteen from the original Porygon2 project.

And let me tell you, whoever programmed the Porygon2's personality matrices was one messed up son of a bitch.

'Cause Athens started bawling her eyes out the instant she caught sight of her dead brother's Tact. pad.

"Athens, come on babe… We can bring Alexandria back. Just like we did with your little brother Troy, remember?" Agent Matusik cooed.

Apparently the altruistic intentions of the Porygon2's personality matrices were more effective on some people than it was on others.

'Cause if it was Alexandria grieving over a dead Athens, I would belittle the stupid computer mercilessly in order to hasten the restoration of his younger sister.

Making a computer that cries is just a waste of time.

Who the hell thought that such a juvenile behavior would have been a beneficial addition for a fucking computer?

"So are you going to bump uglies with your holographic robot after you're done kick starting Alexandria, Agent Technophile?"

It seemed as though Agent Denethor shared my disdain for inefficient AIs.

"Lock it down, both of you." Agent Stockholm interrupted the exchange before Agent Matusik could retort.

"Ranger Bastard? Your report on Theron Halcyon?" Agent Stockholm returned the setting to an appropriate mood with his request.

"I don't have too much to say on the matter, I'm afraid. TH didn't speak a single word for his entire stay in the Pit. All TH did was smirk and slaughter Brock's Championship team. That, and salute Brock at the conclusion of their match. Oh, and he almost killed me, though I don't think that TH was actually intending to murder me. I have a sneaking suspicion that he just didn't care whether I lived or died." I stated calmly.

"In what manner did Theron Halcyon attempt to harm you?" Agent Stockholm asked, concerned.

"That fucking Jellicent of his pulled up a lake of miasma and flooded the Pit with it. I didn't even know that miasma could exist outside of the Distortion-"

"-It can't. Well, not normally." Agent Matusik interrupted me. I looked at him intently, my curiosity holding his gaze to mine.

"It's probably better if I rephrase that statement. Miasma naturally occurs within the Distortion, but if one attempts to remove that ether from the immaterial plane, then the miasma will seep directly back into the Distortion. Typhon has the ability to 'retain' the miasma in our dimension by polarizing his own Distortion seep. Theron Halcyon's Ghosts are not 'normal' Ghosts by any means. Three of them are Halcyon Heirlooms. The Halcyon family has been collecting and consolidating the world's most empowered wraiths for over a millennia. Typhon is unique amongst all Jellicents due not only to his size, which is inconsistent within the Distortion anyways, but primarily because Typhon possess an unrivaled affinity for Distortion manipulation. If the Ghosts had quantum engineers, then Typhon would be the eidolon equivalent of Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger all wrapped up in one. That Jellicent knows more about Distortion superfluidity and interdimensional continuity than any other Ghost thus far encountered and recorded." Agent Matusik halted the eruption of exposition, but only for the shallow intake of breath that he required to continue his assault on my cochleas.

"And believe it or not, Typhon isn't even TH's trump card. Exodus brings the Distortion amalgamations to a whole new level by completely ignoring Newcomb's third law. When Exodus's potential Distortion affinity was realized by the scientific community, it forced us to rethink everything that we had previously established on protractive Distortion rifts. A millennia's worth of hyperspace research and thesis development, all rendered inaccurate and obsolete by just one Ghost." Agent Matusik elaborated further.

"Well, I only saw Pariah and Typhon in the match. They may have been as different in appearances as Ghosts can get, but both of them were absolute nightmares in their own rights. That fucking shield and sword Ghost does not like me in the least, and after witnessing what it did to Brock's Rhyperior, I can shamelessly admit to never wanting to see TH again." I shuddered.

"The Aegislash doesn't like you? What do you mean?" Agent Stockholm was suddenly alert. Something I'd said had tipped the ACE Agent off.

"Aegislash? Never heard of that mon before…" I muttered.

"That's because Aegislashes have only ever appeared in Kalos. And even then, only ever in the possession of Kings. Pariah is the legendary Ghost that secured Theron Halcyon a claim to the Kalosian Crown. In Kalos, the Aegislashes are also known as _The Guardian of Kings._ According to the legends surrounding the Aegislash, any King in possession of an Aegislash will never know a rival to his sovereignty, unless another King with an Aegislash challenges them for the Crown. To the Kalosian people, Pariah stands as an irrefutable testament to Theron Halcyon's invincibility and his divine right to rule." Agent Matusik was a veritable fountain of anomalous information.

"So I take it that this Pariah is freakishly powerful?" I swallowed hard when I asked that question.

"He's the second most powerful Ghost on Theron Halcyon's team, though when you consider how Theron's other Ghosts do battle, sheer power isn't the only defining factor they utilize for establishing supremacy. Quite frankly… Demeter is the one that scares me the most, and Theron rarely uses her in competition." Agent Matusik was an Analyst. He had to be in order to justify his knowledge concerning foreign League information.

"The second most powerful Ghost in a collection of the world's strongest revenants? And I pissed it off? That's great… That's just fucking great…" I fell back in my chair, anxious as all hell.

"How do you know that Pariah holds some form of animosity against you?" Agent Stockholm asked me.

"Maybe because Pariah tried to disembowel me against TH's orders?" I replied.

Every Agent in the room jumped into overdrive.

"-Is Halcyon losing control of his Ghosts?"

"-Are you sure that Theron didn't just stage the scene-"

"-Was there any other witnesses to the event?"

"Hold up, hold up! One at a time, please!" I threw my hands in the air. Every Agent was wearing a severe look.

"Is TH losing control of his Ghosts? I'm not the person you should ask for that analysis. I don't know enough about eidolon-Channeler relationships to even guess at that one. TH got all pissy when Pariah ignored his first order. Pariah obeyed the second command, but I'll tell you, that Ghost wanted me dead. TH expressed his own bewilderment regarding Pariah's disobedience, so I don't think that it was staged. As for other witnesses? It happened in Viridian's shuttle terminal, but Pariah was invisible at the time. A terminal full of eyes would only see me and TH, and most of those eyes were averted." I explained.

"You mean to tell us that you had contact with Theron Halcyon prior to the Pewter City Gym?" Agent Stockholm asked, shock plain in his voice.

"Yeah, almost six days ago. I met TH in the Viridian shuttle terminal." I reported.

Every Agent exchanged a look.

"Did you converse with Theron Halcyon in the Viridian shuttle terminal?" Agent Stockholm asked.

"We umm… Had a casual exchange..." I summed up lamely.

"The details, please. Starting from the beginning. Every word and action that you can remember." Agent Stockholm requested.

"...Well, you've been in terminals before, right?" I asked.

"Frequently. Proceed."

"The Viridian terminal was the standard miserable mess. People were everywhere, and there didn't seem to be a private area in that entire God forsaken hole. But then I found one. A big one. And TH was sitting right in the center of it. So naturally, I went in to investigate."

"You thought that it was wise to investigate a clearing in a shuttle terminal when The Eidolon King was the cause of it?" Agent Matusik asked me.

"Until the Pewter City Gym, I didn't know anything about TH. So I approached him out of ignorance."

"What did you do when you came into contact with Theron Halcyon's Distortion seep?"

"I locked up. I wasn't expecting to meet a Ghost Trainer in a Viridian shuttle terminal, if you get my meaning. That's when Pariah made his presence known with a sword edge up against my throat."

"And then?" Agent Stockholm asked.

"TH dismissed Pariah, and then I made the mistake of looking into TH's eyes."

Yeah, that got a reaction.

The whole room shifted uncomfortably.

"You stupid motherfucker…" Agent Denethor whispered as he fell back against the wall. Agent Matusik leaned forward, jaw dropping.

"What did you see-"

"-Irrelevant. Continue, Ranger Bastard." Agent Stockholm cut off Agent Matusik's eager question.

"Well, after I was done puking my guts out, I asked TH for proof of his Trainer's License, as per protocol when a Ranger encounters an F5 Trainer." I explained.

"And he provided you with his License?"

"Negative. He provided me with a Waiver of Immunity. With an anonymous identity."

"Did you actually walk into the penumbra of Halcyon's Distortion seep?" Agent Matusik asked.

"Affirmative. I was all of a meter away from TH when I reviewed the legitimacy of his legal document."

"That explains Alexandria's transmission blip six days ago… Alexandria's broadcasts were getting scrambled by the Ghosts..." Agent Matusik murmured.

"You actually decided to stand face to face with the Devil of Kalos? And then challenge his authority? That was _ballsy_." Agent Denethor grunted.

"What did you discuss with Theron Halcyon during your review?" Agent Stockholm asked me.

"I was attempting to discern his identity. I mentioned a few lewd nationalistic stereotypes, and TH let slip that he didn't approve of Kanto's coffee. So I pegged him for a Kalosian."

"And then?"

"I pressed him for more information regarding his Ghosts, and then TH dropped a discrete death threat my way, just because I was annoying him." I replied.

"And that's when Pariah attacked you?" Agent Stockholm asked.

"Not quite. I might have taken one last jab at TH before walking off. Pariah wasn't gonna let me have the last word though."

" _You insulted The Eidolon King after he had already threatened to kill you?_ Are you suicidal?" Agent Matusik was completely flabbergasted.

"Maybe. I thought that I could get away with it, but Pariah was ready to correct me for that thought. That freaky Ghost took his time fucking with me, which seemed to piss TH off even more."

"Word for word. What did Halcyon say to you during Pariah's assault?" Agent Stockholm leaned across the table, his tone deepening with dire consequence. I shuddered, and called up the vivid memory.

"Let him go, Pariah. Pariah, I gave you an order. He certainly doesn't like you, Ranger. He doesn't like you at all. How very odd." I was actually holding myself when I finished speaking those words. Just remembering how TH had rendered me completely helpless in the Viridian terminal was kicking the old trauma back into my conscious mind.

"...I swear that his voice did something weird when he got angry… I swear that I could hear people screaming when he got mad…"

I swear that I recognized those screams.

I swear that I knew who those agonized and terrified voices belonged to.

Echo.

 _My Echo…_

"Ranger. Snap out of it. No one here is going to offer you a box of tissues. So suck it up, and shake it out." Agent Denethor growled behind me.

That was an order.

Given to me in the tone of command.

That tone gave me something to hold on to.

Something to pull myself out of the hole with.

"Theron Halcyon found Pariah's behavior odd? Agent Matusik, your analysis?" Agent Stockholm turned to the tinkering hippie and his Porygon2.

"Well… We don't know much about Aegislashes, given that they've been absent from the Kalosian Court for the last three-hundred years, and prior to their exile; the Royalty didn't exactly allow any scientists to research their Aegislashes… Really, all the information that we have on those particular Ghosts are the Kalosian legends. According to the _Halcyon Thelemalibri,_ the Channeling ritual for Aegislashes is unique. Usually, to perform a Channeling ritual, you need a Ghost, a supplicant, an inert Distortion seep, a conductive Hendecagram, and a… sacrifice. You place the Hendecagram in the radius of the inert Distortion seep, put the supplicant at the core of the Hendecagram, supercharge the Ghost by feeding them the sacrifice, and then you introduce the empowered spirit to the supplicant, which thereby invokes a haunting between the Ghost and the supplicant. And finally, you just let the conductive Hendecagram circuit-break the haunting, while the inert Distortion seep reverses the Ghost's life-siphon... The end result of which, is that the supplicant becomes the Ghost's Channeler." Agent Matusik popped open a bottle of water and guzzled the contents in a split-second. Tossing aside the empty beverage, Agent Matusik proceeded to establish himself as ACE's poster child of verbal hurricanes.

"Some pretty whacked out stuff happens in the final stage of the ritual. The supplicant starts speaking in tongues, the Ghost starts becoming something… anthropomorphous in appearance... and then a series of ceremonial oaths are extracted from both the supplicant and the Ghost. Both of their vows are spoken through the Channeler's mouth. The last bit is slightly religious, but there is a time frame after the Channeling ritual's completion where the Channeler… seems to embody the 'personality' of their new Ghost. Fledgling Channelers say and do some really freaky shit for the first few hours following the ritual. The Channeling process itself is actually scientific. But the last scene's piece-de-resistance has yet to have been explained by science. We have no idea what's transpiring between the Ghost and their Channeler in the afterglow. The whole shebang has kind of supported the eidolon-veneration dogma, and we haven't been able to prove or disprove their beliefs yet."

Agent Matusik was a human encyclopedia. I caught myself wondering if he was single. A man like Agent Matusik should have born with bookmark embedded in his brain. He needed a pause switch just so that I could keep up with him.

"An interesting lecture, Agent Matusik, but I'm afraid that your reputation for verbal tangents remains undisputed. So answer me concisely this time; How is an Aegislash's Channeling ritual any different from every other Ghost's?"

Agent Stockholm may have been a patient man, but even a patient man could only tolerate so much info-babble.

Agent Matusik went red around the gills.

"From what is recorded in the _Halcyon Thelemalibri,_ the Aegislash Channeling ritual requires an unspecified additional component. That, and the Channeling circle starts off by Channeling a Doublade. Somewhere along the ritual's lines, the Doublade becomes an Aegislash. Then the newly formed Ghost either bows before its King, or lops his crowned head off. Unlike every other known Ghost species, Doublade-Aegislash evolutions do not occur naturally. An Aegislash can only manifest through human intervention. And even when Channeled, Aegislashes remain maverick spirits. This trait is also unique to the Aegislash Ghosts. The Aegislash chooses their King, and they are only loyal to that King. But Aegislashes can still act independently of their King's wishes. Though normally, this defiant behavior is only ever exhibited when an Aegislash's King endangers his own life. The Aegislash will ignore its King's commands, and endeavor to spare their King from his own self-destructive behaviors. Also, when the King dies, their Aegislash disappears into the Distortion with them, never to be seen again. No other Ghost does that. Otherwise, the Halcyons would have a couple of Aegislashes kicking around in their Heirloom collection, seeing as in Kalos's past; it was House Halcyon's noble duty to oversee and perform the Aegislash summoning coronations."

So much for the abridged version. But I wasn't drooling at the end of this explanation, so for Agent Matusik…

...I guess this ascertation counted as concise.

"That's a weird fucking Ghost…" Agent Denethor muttered.

"So Aegislashes are rather distinct in their behaviors?" Agent Stockholm asked Agent Matusik.

"To quote the Halcyon Thelemalibri _, The Aegislash stands alone as the Knight amongst spirits, loyal to the Crown before every other statute. The Guardian of Kings will protect his sire from all adversity, even those meted by the King's own hand. Nor shall death separate the Knight from the King, for at the hour of succession, the Crown shall pass into hands of the living, but the Guardian of Kings will accompany his lord into the blackened lands, forevermore to guide and ward his soul-bound King."_ Agent Matusik recited. I looked over my shoulder at Agent Denethor.

"These Halcyons like making their Ghosts sound romantic, don't they?" I asked. Agent Denethor sputtered a snort.

" _Nor shall Death separate the Knight from the King…_ Makes you kind of wonder if the Aegislash Channelers get a special taste of hell before their Ghost kills them… Ugh..." Agent Matusik shuddered.

"As you've previously mentioned, Agent Matusik, this is all based off of legends. So forgive me if I add a grain of salt to the _Halcyon Thelemalibri's_ account. But some of the Halcyon excerpts mention peculiar behaviors that seem to coincide with Pariah's outburst in the Viridian terminal. Maybe the Ghost is sentient. Maybe our Ranger Bastard aggravated Pariah when he insulted Theron Halcyon. Either way, what this does tell us; is that we had best adhere to extra precautions when dealing with Theron Halcyon. We thought that his Ghosts were under his total control, but apparently one of them can act for itself." Agent Stockholm summarized.

"Ranger Bastard, do have anything else to add on the subject?" Agent Stockholm asked me.

"No sir. That is everything I can offer." I replied.

"Agent Matusik, what is Alexandria's current status?" Agent Stockholm asked his underling.

"Not good, sir. Athens and I are reconstructing his tesseract-lattice matrix as we speak. We haven't even begun recoding him yet. This could take hours, even without factoring in the Distortion scream contingency update." Agent Matusik reported.

"Can Athens finish the reconstruction and system updates through cyberspace?" Agent Stockholm asked.

"Absolutely. Once we reset Ranger Bastard's Tact. Pad, I can even assist Athens remotely. I can have the Tact. Pad running again in ten minutes. Once a functional Alexandria reintegrates with the Tact. Pad's quantum drive, he'll automatically install the Distortion scream contingency software into the device as well." Agent Matusik replied.

"Good. Start booting up the Tact. Pad at once. Ranger Bastard-" Agent Stockholm turned to me, extending a hand across the table.

"-Thank you for your assistance in this matter. ACE appreciates your valuable input, and we at ACE would also like to congratulate you on acquiring your first Indigo League Badge. Keep up the good work, Ranger. You're going to save a lot of lives." Agent Stockholm informed me as we shook hands.

"It's my honored duty, sir." I replied. Agent Stockholm smiled slightly.

"Sorry to have ruined your evening meal. We put a tag on your League Analyst contact in Pewter. Igor will direct you to him. Lights out, Ranger." My eyes slammed shut as that seemingly absent Medicham took over my mental functions again. Despite my multiple psychological invasions, the disturbing identity of TH being revealed to me, and the soon to be resurrected Alexandria being returned to me…

...I still felt pretty content.

ACE didn't want to kill me anymore.

That was a load off my plate, let me tell you.

…

"Where the hell have you been?"

My vision returned with the rest of my senses when Derek called out to me.

God, I _hate_ psions…

Derek and I were sitting at an outdoor coffee shop located in one of Pewter's outlying western precincts.

"Got a priority hail from High Command. Sorry about ditching you with the bill, but I'll pay you back." I answered, shaking the heebie-jeebies out of my limbs.

"What did Ranger High Command want?" Derek asked me, passing a styrofoam container my way.

One cold, soggy burger awaited my dining pleasure.

"Sorry, Derek. That's classified information." I reported, tearing into my revolting meal.

Fuck, I was hungry.

"Okay… I guess…" Derek chuckled nervously.

"It's boring procedure anyways, Analyst. Think of it as a weekly checkup." I grunted past a mouthful of oily mush.

"I get it, I get it. But I do have to ask. What are your plans now?" Derek looked at me curiously.

I sighed, and set down my disintegrating burger.

"I'm leaving Pewter City tomorrow afternoon. Me and my squad are headed for Cerulean next, so we've got the Crescent Valley to slog through before we make it to the Mount Moon shuttle terminal." I answered.

Derek fluttered his lips in disappointment.

"What?" I asked, slightly irritated.

Derek shrugged.

"I'm headed towards Viridian next. I got my passport for Johto. I'm crossing the Argent border to ply my skills against the Johto Gym Leaders." Derek answered glumly.

"Dude! Wait till you try out the food in Johto. I got to tell you a little traveling secret. If the menu is written in Kantonese, skip the joint and find an establishment with a line of locals out front. You can only get a genuine taste of Johtonene cuisine-"

"-Are you sure that you don't want to see Johto?" Derek asked me.

I froze.

Was Derek suggesting-?

"...I hear the woman in Johto will do _anything,_ and you can legally get laid in public at one of Goldenrod's Paper Lantern Festivals…." Derek added, a smirk lifting the corners of his mouth.

 _He wanted to travel with me?_

I was an asshole!

Who would want to travel with an asshole for a companion?

"...Derek, I'd love to attend a couple of Goldenrod's orgy festivals, but High Command hasn't cleared me for the Johtonene Gym division…" I swallowed.

"...Well shit... That's too bad." Derek muttered, slowly rotating his espresso on the counter of the coffee shop.

What the fuck?

"Derek… I gotta ask you something myself now. Why do you want me to travel with you?" I asked, curious.

Derek shrugged again.

"You've got a lot of promise, Zane. I thought that I might be able to brush up your League education with my Analyst trade. That, and I thought it would be kind of fun, facing Indigo's Victory Road with you. I know it sounds dopey but... You know…" Derek drained his espresso.

Actually…

 _I did know._

"Yeah it would be kind of cool. I think that we'd make for a pretty dynamic duo. So why don't you come with me to Cerulean? I didn't see a Cascade Badge in your peacoat." I nudged Derek with an elbow.

Derek just laughed.

"No, man… I can't go back to Cerulean. There's a warrant for my arrest there." Derek snorted.

"What?!" I started, looking at Derek in sheer disbelief.

Derek kept on laughing, leaving me to wonder if he was just yanking my chain.

But then-

"You remember that speech you gave the Loft regarding the sale of poached mon in the Blackmarket? Well… Hard times occasionally necessitate illicit activities…" Derek said nervously.

"You dirty scamming motherfucker. I trusted you." I joked, laughing my ass off.

"...It wasn't my finest hour, but… The pay was damn good." Derek looked at his empty espresso whimsically.

I motioned to the coffee crew behind the counter, and indicated Derek's vacant cup.

A fresh espresso found its way into Derek's hand.

"You got greedy, didn't you?" I asked.

"Shit. I was terrible." Derek groaned.

"Who busted you first? The Cerulean cops or the Blackmarket bosses?" I asked.

"The cops set up a sting. I could smelled the trap, but the Sandz was right there…" Derek shook his head and sighed.

"In a way, that week behind bars curbed my appetite for easy money. But I wasn't sticking around Cerulean to spend twenty years of my life in prison. So I skipped on bail, throwing everything I had at the court just to stay out of the penitentiary until my trial, and then I immediately fled to Fuschia so that I could hole up with one of my close contacts in the Kurosawa clan until the heat blew over." Derek put a hand over his eyes.

"I don't know, man… It was an eye opener for me. I originally jumped into the Blackmarket to fund my Analyst schooling, but somewhere along the lines… I got caught up in the scene." Derek chuckled.

"Well, based off of the contents of our previous discussion… I think you might have learned a valuable lesson from the ordeal." I said.

Derek chuckled.

"Yeah. It just came at one hefty cost... I have family in Cerulean… And they're not well enough off to afford a shuttle pass to go as far as Saffron. So…"

"Fuck, dude…" I murmured, shaking my own head in empathy.

Derek's story just sounded like a road of shitty luck.

"I deserved what happened. But I never wanted to hurt my family like that. So phone calls are all that we have now. I tried wiring them some cash for a shuttle ticket to Saffron, but the Cerulean cop-shop was keeping tabs on my movements. That money went straight into my bounty." Derek leaned on the counter, and stared bleakly into the Coffee shop's inner compound.

"I miss my folks… And ever since I eloped, I've been avoiding my contacts in the Blackmarket. My lot has been pretty lonely since that crap went down in Cerulean." Derek's glazed eyes stared off into the distance.

"...At least you can still talk to them…"

Derek snapped out of it and looked at me, curiosity carving furrows into his brow.

"Is your family…?"

"They're as good as. My dad… Heh… He- He really didn't approve of my career choice. He wanted me to carry on the family trade. He told me that I was a disgrace, and that I was gonna get myself killed. My dad told me that he put his own future aside for me, and that I was shitting on him by joining up with the Rangers…" I mumbled, punctuating the fucking awful memory with a shuddering intake of breath.

"My mom… She was crying her eyes out. She thought that she was gonna lose me. My mom tried to hold me one last time before I headed to the Saffron academy… But my dad…" I choked a bit, and then punished myself for even speaking of this shit.

I knew better.

I was over this.

 _...Wasn't I?_

"Hey… Take it easy, Zane. Just give it time. Your dad will pull his head out of his ass sooner or later. Every family has fucked up history. But family always forgives. Your parents will call you someday."

"-He wouldn't answer my calls from the academy. He had Silph Co. block all incoming calls from the Corps. I even tried getting a hold of my mother through one her friends… _But that fucking asshole bought all of her friends off…_ "

I need to stop.

I needed to stop doing this to myself right now.

"Zane. Chill. I'm telling you, dude. They'll come back to you. Trust me." Derek was patting my back now. I took a deep breath, and pushed the rising tears back.

I don't want pity.

I don't want to remember it.

"It would've been nice, traveling with you, Derek. It would have been a lot of fun. But I answer to High Command, and you have your own dreams to chase. And anyways, who knows?" I looked at Derek with my real smile on.

"We may still enter Victory Road at the start of the Seasonal Finals, side by side."

"That's what I wanted to hear." Derek punched me in the shoulder, a grin working its way up to his ears.

Brotherhood.

You didn't have to wear a beret to know what that was.

And right now, a little bit of mutual support was something that I needed.

"...Listen… Derek…" I pursed my lips together.

"Yeah, Zane?" Derek fixed me with a calm eye, probably hearing something deep welling up in my voice.

"...I've got something that I need to do before I leave Pewter. I tried to do it before, but… I just don't have the nerve to do it alone. Could I ask a favor of you?" I swallowed.

Derek gave me the thumbs up.

"Anything you need, Zane."

"Thanks, Derek. Would you meet me at the Jade precinct's Pokemart tomorrow around eleven-hundred-hours? I have to pick up my Magikarp from the Pokemart, and then I need to talk to someone." I said, slowly calming down, despite the new-old worry coming back to haunt me.

"Who do you have to talk to?" Derek asked, looking at me something pensive.

"...You'll see. It might… It will get emotional, but I need to say something to someone… I just hope that she'll hear me out…" I worked my mouth.

"I'll be outside the Pokemart at eleven o'clock tomorrow. Don't worry about it, Zane." Derek slapped my shoulder firmly, just as the bill came down from the folks behind the counter.

I snatched it up, and paid for Derek's coffee with my own money.

"Does that cover the burger?" I asked, tossing down a tip.

"It's more than enough, Zane. Now let's get to a fucking hotel. I hope you don't mind, but I want separate rooms. Your Bulbasaur snores. Loudly." Derek laughed.

And I could laugh with him.

"Alright. Let's call it a day." I grunted, pulling my ass of the stool, and heading off for want of a quiet night's sleep.

…

"Holy FUCK!" Derek's jaw dropped when he saw Darwin in the Tank.

"Darwin, this is Derek. Derek, this is fatass." I introduced Derek to my fish with a smug grin.

" _That's a fucking Magikarp?"_ Derek covered his gaping mouth with an open palm.

"The single most expensive pile of canned fish that you ever will see. My Darwin." I gloated.

Darwin bumped his lips against the glass, eagerly flapping his pectoral fins when he saw me approach.

"Your scales are almost back, chunky. And it looks like you gained another tonne. Shit. How much bigger can you get, Darwin?" I laughed, pulling out his Pokeball.

"We got the Boulder Badge without your lazy ass, so you're gonna be pulling double time in the field to make up for that shitty excuse you call service. You ready for the League, you worthless piece of Skitty bait?" I growled.

Darwin started winding up for a breach.

In a tiny room.

With me in it.

That stupid huge fish could only land in one location if he actually managed to breach the Tank.

On me.

"ABSTAIN, YOU FUCKING IDIOT! ARE TRYING TO KILL ME?" I roared, backing up into the wall.

Darwin floundered just short of the water's surface.

"Darwin, you are dismissed!" I smiled when I recalled my crazy fucking Magikarp into his Pokeball.

"Goddamn you stupid fish… I missed you too." I chuckled when I returned Darwin's Pokeball to my belt.

"Holy crap… When that thing becomes a Gyarados…" Derek had a hand over his hammering heart.

To Derek, there was no 'if' about Darwin's evolution.

That Analyst had already ascertained a 'when'.

"Darwin is gonna be scarier than all of hell. When Darwin and I make our appearance at the Indigo League Finals, Lance Drakengard will die of DVT from a blood clot related to his terminal penis envy." I smirked. Derek shook his head, laughing his ass off.

I sighed.

"...You ready, Zane?" Derek asked softly.

It took me a moment answer Derek.

"...Let's get this show on the road." I muttered, heading off for the Pokemart's exit.

…

It was a simple little pink bungalow, with a colorful garden out front, and a white picket fence separating the lawn from the sidewalk. It looked like somebody's dream.

Brenda's dream.

My Bren's home.

"Zane… Is this-?" Derek asked softly when I locked up.

"This was her home… This was where she was going to live… This…" I was choking up already, and I hadn't even crossed the white gate yet.

"A comrade?" Derek asked quietly.

"Yeah…" I answered, my voice shaking.

But not just a comrade.

A friend.

An innocent.

A lover.

A dreamer.

A hope.

A responsibility…

"She died under my command… She died because I stuck my nose somewhere that it didn't belong… She died because I failed her…" I could hardly breath through the grief.

Derek swallowed next to me, before he moved forward, and approached the white gate…

 _And then Derek opened it, and stood aside for me._

Derek didn't have to say anything.

It would have been harder for me to move if he did.

I limped my way through that gate, my indestructible appearance forgotten when I heard Brenda's giggle again.

" _I got married!"_

The first step...

" _...But you know what you're doing-"_

The second step.

" _You don't understand! They're still alive! They're only babies! Don't kill them, Zane! Please… Please don't hurt them!"_

The third step.

" _We'll be fine tonight, Echo. There's no reason to fear."_

The first pause.

" _Zane, I trust you. If you tell me that everything is going to be okay-"_

The fourth step.

" _Zane… Don't worry. I'll be with you tomorrow. I'll be right beside you the whole way. I'll be strong for you."_

The wedding photo coming out of my pocket.

" _This is Melissa."_

The second pause.

" _I'm going to get you back to Melissa, Bren. I promise you."_

"Zane?"

" _...What if Echo Squad's Ghosts are still here?"_

I closed my wallet on that ruined picture with a snap. My breath was coming out in short gasps. Derek was beside me, his hand resting on my shoulder.

"Come on. You're almost there." Derek whispered gently.

I sucked in a shuddering wind-

-And pushed myself up to the door of the Bungalow.

I froze when I reached up to knock.

The I took another deep breath…

Knock.

Knock.

 _Knock_.

Derek and I stood there, waiting for an answer.

After a minute had passed, I tried again.

"Please… Please, Melissa… Answer me…"

Nothing.

"Maybe she's just not-" Derek looked around, and then stopped mid sentence.

I turned to inspect what had cut my foil off.

 _Oh no…_

"...I think we came a little late…" Derek murmured.

It was leaning up against the inside of the picket fence. Like someone had relocated it, just to prevent any further attention being paid to it.

A Realtor's sign.

With a tag dangling from the bottom.

Written on with the lonely red word-

 _-Sold._

"No…"

"Zane?" Derek sounded worried.

No.

No. This can't be happening.

I pulled out my Tact. Pad, and punched the Realtor's advertised number into the display.

On the third ring, somebody answered.

"Hello, this is the Pewter Estate-"

"-Is this Joe Mallory?" I asked, voice desperate.

"I'm sorry?"

"I'm looking at one of your Realtor signs that designates a Joe Mallory as the real estate agent who brokered the Eckleson residence. I need to talk to him." I was begging on my end of the line.

"Are you representing-?"

"JUST PUT JOE ON, GODDAMNIT!"

That got me some results.

Less than thirty seconds later, a new voice hit the opposite feed.

"Hello? This is Joe Mallory. I understand that you're calling in regards to the Eckleson residence?"

"Forgot about the residence! Listen! There was a girl who lived in this house- Melissa! Melissa Eckleson! Where did she move to?" I was choking on my own voice.

"I'm afraid that I only deal with clients-"

"THIS IS FUCKING RANGER AFFAIRS, MISTER MALLORY! NOW IF YOU CANNOT PROCURE ME THE INFORMATION THAT I REQUESTED, THEN YOU WILL DIRECT ME TO AN OFFICE THAT CAN!"

My stack was blown.

I was ready to get High Command on the other end if need be.

I needed to know where Melissa had gone.

"Stop yelling at-"

"-You hang up this phone on me, motherfucker, and a G.I. Onix is gonna be waiting for your ass at your place of residence. Quit dicking around with me. Now answer the Goddamn question, or start perusing your own business catalogue for a new home."

My voice was deathly serious.

 _I needed to know._

"-Listen, I don't know where Melissa Eckleson went! All I know is that she put her residence up for sale a couple weeks ago and applied for a Trainer's Licence! She mentioned something at one of our discussions about making an escape out on the lam! I don't even know if she's still in the Pewter-Viridian district anymore! She just disappeared after we brokered her joint!"

 _Disappeared?_

"Does anyone else know where Melissa Eckleson might have gone?" I asked, my voice growing even more desperate.

"I doubt it. Like I said, Melissa just disappeared. The police issued a missing persons warrant about a week ago, when someone else reported her as absent. Nobody knows where Melissa Eckleson went."

No.

Somebody had to know…

"I'm sorry that I can't be more help. But if that concludes our exchange, then have a pleasant day, _Ranger._ Goodbye."

 _Click_.

"Hello?"

A dead line was the only thing that answered me.

That was all she wrote.

" _Goddamnit_." I pulled the Tact. Pad away from my ear and glared at the idle screen.

"Well, Zane… What now?" Derek asked me softly.

I was silent.

I couldn't believe this.

I could finally do it…

And now I couldn't.

"Zane?"

"The Crescent Valley." I spat. Derek grabbed me by the arm.

"Hey… calm down. Just take a moment, okay? You're beating yourself up over this-"

" _She died, Derek. She died. My soldier. My responsibility. My Brenda. She died…"_ I was hyperventilating.

Derek swallowed.

He knew that he couldn't talk me down from this.

"Zane? If I give you my number, would you promise not to turn it over to the Cerulean cops?" Derek asked.

I wrestled some deep breaths down my windpipe.

"...Yeah. Yeah, I can make that promise." I answered when I could speak.

Derek took my Tact. Pad out of my hands, and registered himself under my contacts list.

Alexandria let him, that stupid little computer even pulled up my number for Derek.

If Derek was surprised by my Tact. Pad's apparent sentience, he was tactful enough to keep it to himself.

"Give me a call if something comes up. Or just call me if you want to talk. I'll give you a buzz when I get my fifth Badge. If only to rub it in your face how much catch-up work you're gonna have to do in order to keep up with me." Derek grinned at the end, causing something funny to well up from my throat.

It was a laugh.

A real laugh.

"...Okay. I'll be eagerly awaiting that call. Just to tell you that I earned my sixth Gym Badge before you got your fifth, Peacoat." I punctuated my retort with a fist to Derek's shoulder.

Derek, laughing his ass off, returned my gesture in kind.

I hope that I run into more like you, Derek.

People like you give me hope…

"I'll see you to Pewter's eastern gate, but that's as close to Cerulean as I'm gonna get." Derek chortled as the two of us headed past the picket fence.

"Shit… You have to cross Mount Moon before you even enter the Cerulean police's jurisdiction. You finally got tired of my bullshit attitude, didn't you Four-Badges?" I snorted.

Derek just kept laughing.

I still felt like absolute shit.

That wasn't gonna change anytime soon.

-But I wasn't alone with that feeling anymore.

And that alone gave me a reason to smile.

…

I groaned as I slowly regained consciousness. My nose itched from where all the grass and dirt had buried itself into my nares.

I put my scraped palms on the sun warmed earth, and pushed myself off of my gut.

And as soon as I straightened out my elbows…

-My face was in the dirt again.

"Goddamnit…"

I knew that this was going to be hard. I knew that my life was going to enter a whole new order of hell. I though that I knew what I was getting into when I made that bold request of Brock.

I should have just sucked it up and taken the Gym Leader's citation and fine.

ACE's punishment for my failure in the Pewter City Gym would have been more humane and dignified than this.

The fucking Intermediate-Twos were going to kill me.

 _RUMBLE._

Or more specifically…

 _My own fucking Onix was going to kill me._

"Damascus… You piece of shit…" I wheezed, rolling onto my haunches.

The crowd of Trainers was long gone.

They broke and ran when Damascus plowed his profanity-spewing CO into the ground.

That stupid ornery rock-snake was taking a dirt nap in the ammonia-rich soil of the Crescent Valley.

I could see exactly where Damascus had buried himself.

You could hardly miss it.

The entire field that had played host to our last Intermediate-Two battle was ripped to shit.

Damascus did not like getting torched by a Magmortar.

 _Damascus did not like it at all._

"You fucking insane senile old snake…" I grumbled, pulling myself onto my feet.

My elderly Onix ignored me when I approached his mound.

...

Onixia don't age. Technically, they can live forever; provided that disease, violence, or calamity does not bring them unto death first. Most Onixia only last for about five-hundred years before one of the above claims them. A properly old Onix is recognised at eight-hundred years in age.

 _And my Damascus was approaching two-thousand-three-hundred-and-thirty-four fucking years in age._

Damascus was easily the oldest living mon on earth. He had arrived on this planet following the Brink Collapse's first wake, meaning that Damascus had fought with humanity at the peak of our species's technological warfare prowess. Damascus had lived through that bloody era, scrapping with the humans and his fellow mon in the eternal conflict that we call nature.

During our Dark Ages, while humanity waned, Damascus and the mon waxed. And following those uncertain years up until the present, Damascus had been fighting everyday of his long-ass life against both the men and the mon, maintaining his title of dominance throughout every field and every confrontation.

Then roughly twenty-five years ago, a spiteful Ranger, who would later be known as _Captain Douglas Fitzgerald_ , entered the Mount Silver Valley with a squad of Rangers Vets hellbent on ending Damascus's reign of terror.

The end result of that conflict surprised both participants.

Four of the five Rangers wound up KIA when Damascus brought half a mountain down on them.

And Damascus ended up incarcerated within a Ranger's Heavy Ball when the sole human survivor swore vengeance against the snake responsible for the deaths of his men.

Captain Douglas Fitzgerald had a weird sense of humor. Anyone who knew the Cap could tell you that much. But when the Cap announced to the Corps that he'd be making a dog out of a tyrant...

-High Command just about sent the Captain's ass into an asylum.

Onixia are ridiculously difficult to train. Comes from reigning superior for ages untold, I guess. But trying to train a Onix as old as Damascus…

How the hell was Doug gonna break that ancient belligerent snake into the Ranger Corps?

You know that old saying?

"You can't teach an old dog new tricks?"

Well, my Cap put that idiom straight into the dirt when he cracked old Damascus open like a book.

None of the Rangers could figure out how Doug had managed it.

But that Onix answered to my Cap's every command.

And I learned how to earn obedience from that snake by following my Captain's instruction.

I guess Doug knew that I could do it, after seeing me and Vauban working together.

You see, Doug figured Damascus out pretty quickly.

As I stated before; Damascus, being an Onix, doesn't age. Not really.

But two-thousand-plus years of violence can scar the most enduring minds.

Despite his cerebral physiology weathering the onslaught of time exceptionally well…

Damascus had lost his mind to all those recorded experiences.

Onixia can live forever, but that doesn't mean that they should.

Damascus couldn't tell what day of his life he living at any given moment.

Sometimes, Damascus was Damascus the Ranger, willfully following the orders of his human CO.

And sometimes…

Damascus was Damascus the King of Mount Silver, enforcing his superiority over every other lifeform that dared to draw breath in his presence.

Doug had his hands full trying to learn the complex creature that was Damascus.

And bizarrely enough…

All it took from Doug to curb that rabid beast, was a little camaraderie.

And a lot of classical music.

Damascus was so accustomed to constant conflict, that this old snake didn't know what to make of the bold Ranger who stood so close to him without having any ascertainable form of weaponry on hand.

Though Damascus was plenty pissed about being shouted at by a human, that rock-snake didn't see any sense in wasting his time killing my Captain.

And despite his original ignoble intents, Doug was able to exploit Damascus's lack-homicidal attitude long enough to establish a trust. A two lane road of trust, that afflicted Doug as emotionally as it afflicted Damascus.

It took years. Damn near a decade. But when Damascus and Doug finally hit it off-

 _The oldest mon in the world was recognized as a Ranger._

To be honest, I still don't know who was in charge.

Damascus or Doug.

They gave each other as much command in their relationship as they gave obedience to one another.

From High Command's perspective, it seemed like a compromise.

But that compromise got some incredible results.

There are only a handful of Onixia in the Ranger Corps. There's even less in the League Registries. Onixia are relatively rare as a species, and most Trainer encounters with the Onixia don't leave many human survivors. Compound that with the cost of maintaining, feeding, and training a foreign silicon-based organism of an Onix's size…

...And in order to afford training an Onix; you have to be either one filthy stinking rich motherfucker, or a Ranger capable of authorizing a G.I. dispatch.

Yep.

Damascus wasn't cheap to keep in the Corps. Granted, my snake could get most of the dietary resources that he needed from eating dirt, but some of the minerals that were absent in Damascus's daily clay feast…

...Costed more than silver on the market, ounce per ounce.

-And Damascus swallowed that expensive shit down by the tonne.

Damascus only needed a heavy infusion of jadarite once every twelve years, but the cost of manufacturing and mining the quantities that his metabolism required…

-Let's just say that if you added up the cumulative salaries of every active Ranger in the Viridian outpost during that twelve year span…

...You still wouldn't even cover _half_ of the cost it took to purchase the amount of jadarite that Damascus's health demanded.

So in order to keep Damascus on the payroll as a Ranger, Doug had to make that snake worth every ounce of his jadarite and then some.

And that's exactly what Doug did.

Damascus was the Viridian-Pewter district's heavy hitter back when Doug held his reins. Back then, if a "Black handle" callsign went out in Viridian, Command would call in Doug and Damascus before they called in the Blackhats.

Damascus was a bonafide D5CU, and his tunneling skills combined with his sheer mass and impenetrable carapace made Damascus an even greater asset to the Corps when he assumed the role of a Bastion Class.

Bastion Classes are pretty rare themselves, and usually only reserved for the Onixia species in the Corps. If you want a mobile fortress that could laugh off the blows dealt by a Nidoking pack, while offering a strategic platform for infantry units to safely engage the Nidoking from-

-Then you want yourself a Bastion Class Onix.

 _Doug made Damascus worth his weight in jadarite._

But that all went to shit on my thirty-sixth mission in the S-ranks. Back when I was a member of the three man unit known then as Team Eleven…

We were deployed into the Long Sway with a standing safari mission to slay all the Ursaring mothers and cubs that we came across in those brown grasslands.

Unfortunately, the Ursaring season corresponds with the Stantler season.

And unknown to Team Eleven, a sudden flooding of the Sung River caused a deviation in the Stantler's migratory patterns.

Doug and I woke up to Trish screaming something about an approaching army.

Damn near three-hundred Stantlers had entered the Long Sway in search of a passage across the Sung River.

And those horny, rutting, territorial and angsty motherfuckers weren't putting up with the shenanigans of any mon or Rangers that stood in their way.

Damascus formed a living wall for us to hole up behind.

And then the Stantlers started jumping that wall, eager to kill the squishy little Rangers who were just trying to wait for the herd to pass.

We had to adjust our tactics accordingly.

Team Eleven went on the offensive.

I don't know how many Stantlers were killed by Team Eleven, but it was enough to turn a swath of the Long Sway red with their dismembered corpses.

And at the end of my thirty-sixth mission in the S-ranks, I no longer cared about keeping a tally of all the mon that I had killed.

Because at the end of my thirty-sixth mission in the S-ranks, I witnessed my first Ranger casualty.

After being gored through the crotch by a charging Stantler, Doug took another Stantler's hooves to both femurs, splitting his Femoral arteries open on the shattered bone.

And when the remaining members of Team Eleven drove the Stantler back, it was shortly there after that my Captain bled to death in my arms.

While the rest of Team Eleven, including Damascus, stood by in attendance.

Damascus fled the Long Sway after that. Trish and a team of Ranger Vets were deployed with Damascus's Heavy Ball, and given the mission of bringing a G.I. Onix back home…

But as far as Damascus was concerned…

...The Ranger Corps wasn't a home without his Doug.

Onixia are weird animals. They're incredibly apathetic when nothing's bothering them, and insanely violent when something provokes them. We don't know anything about their breeding habits, actual population numbers, where they get their rare dietary resources from, or really much of anything about them at all; chiefly because most of an Onix's life is spent a solid klick underground. But we do know of two very peculiar behaviors that are associated with the Onixia species.

One, they're cannibals. Because the earth's geological environment doesn't exactly provide an Onix with an abundance of certain necessary minerals, Onixia will happily hunt and eat members of their own species to make up for the lack. There's few things an Onix likes eating more than another Onix.

Two, they mate for life, and a pair of Onix progenitors will zealously raise and protect their own offspring.

The first trait isn't all that weird in the world of mon, but when paired with the second trait…

...It comes across as a bit of a natural contradiction.

And the Onixia family bonds aren't broken when the babies leave the nest.

Even after three-hundred years of separation, mommy and daddy snake will still make a hole in their territory for one of their visiting baby snakes.

Doug used that family trait to bond with Damascus.

Just think of two-thousand-plus years of a solo snake waging war on the world.

Then one day, that snake is removed from the age old world of mono-sided conflict.

Quite suddenly, that snake is no longer alone in their war.

Suddenly, that snake has a family, working to promote and defend him.

And suddenly…

...That snake finds a purpose beyond just killing and eating.

I don't know how Doug was able to imprint himself upon Damascus as a member of Damascus's family.

I just know that my Captain did it.

It takes a special kind of personality to work with Damascus.

That snake was stupidly picky about who he would put up with yelling at him.

Neither Trish, nor even Colonel Howes could safely make Damascus carry out a single command that they gave him.

Only two Rangers could order Damascus around, and not get killed in the process.

One was Doug.

The other was me.

It seems that I possess the personality that Damascus will accept in a partnership.

Maybe it was the cockiness, because Doug had that in spades too.

Or maybe it was just something deeper to both of us that Damascus could sense.

Maybe it was my own want of a family, and my commitment to that family.

I don't know.

All I do know, is that I made Doug cry in joy when I gave Damascus an order to dig, and dig that Onix did.

Previously, Damascus would only dig for Doug.

Doug's single greatest fear was for Damascus's fate after Doug's own death. The Rangers weren't liable to tolerate an unbroken Onix in their numbers any longer than the aforementioned Onix would. So when Doug finally departed, it seemed pretty likely that Damascus would too. But then I came into the scene, and that fear was put aside for another generation.

But after Doug's death in the Long Sway; when Trish and the other Rangers brought Damascus back to Viridian Prime Outpost, Damascus wasn't a Ranger anymore.

He was the King of Mount Silver, and these puny humans were trying to fuck with his head.

Without Doug's guidance, Damascus became as unpredictable and as dangerous as all hell.

Damascus wound up in cold storage, officially listed for indefinitely.

And Damascus would have likely remained there, if not for one obscure line in Captain Douglas Fitzgerald's will.

" _Take good care of him, Bastard."_

Doug had left his legend to me.

To train, to instruct, to utilize, and to guide.

To protect, and to serve.

Because Doug knew that Damascus needed something to save him from his own long past.

Because Doug wanted the snake that killed his men twenty-five years ago to live a fulfilling life.

It wasn't easy for me.

To Damascus, I wasn't Doug.

I was just the next best thing.

And I had my work cut out for me, proving to Damascus that I was worthy of his respect.

In hindsight…

...I'm amazed that Doug's old snake gave me so many chances after I failed him, again and again.

…

"Damascus. Report." I growled, kicking the shifting earth below me with a grimace on my face.

The dirt stopped moving.

"That means get up here, asshole…" I spat between clenched teeth.

Nothing.

"You old fuck. We had a good thing going. Six matches in a row. Technically seven. You were kicking the ass, and I was taking the names. We had a fucking horde of Trainers following us around, just to spectate an Intermediate-Two battle worthy of a Gym ring. You were fucking beautiful, tearing Pidgeots outta the sky and whipping Torterras into the heavens, but then you got _bitchy_ when that Magmortar singed your ass. You damn near killed another mon in restricted format. Do you have any idea what that would have done to us?!" I paused to draw a deep breath.

"I WOULD HAVE BEEN PENALIZED FOR MON-SLAUGHTER, AND THE LEAGUE WOULD HAVE THROWN MY ASS OUT OF THE SCENE! THEN THE RANGERS WOULD HAVE KILLED YOUR ASS FOR BEING A FUCKING LIABILITY TO THE WOUNDED HEARTS PROJECT! YOU COULD HAVE FUCKED IT ALL UP!" I was screaming myself hoarse at the silent ground.

"GET YOUR ASS UP HERE, DAMASCUS! I AM NOT DONE-!"

- _RUMBLE._

...Oh shit.

-Those tremors beneath my feet were not a good sign.

"DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE-!"

- _BOOM._

My ass was flying high on the snout of my Onix.

Damascus ripped a new rectum in the earth's crust when he barreled it out of the dirt to hit me with all the force of a runaway shuttle train.

My closing thoughts before I crashed into the ground was the simple self-beration-

... _When was I gonna learn?_

…

I wasn't out for very long. Maybe twenty minutes. But I came out of my stupor groaning like a sore bitch. It took me longer to pick myself up than it did for me to wake up.

But when I did-

 _RUMBLE._

The Great Wall of Damascus was on all sides of me. My white snake was half buried in the soil, sponging up his dietary necessities, yet seemingly concerned enough for me to erect a defensive perimeter around my unconscious ass.

Or maybe there was just more ammonia in the soil underneath me.

Who knows?

"Oh, that's sweet of you, Damascus." I started off all pissed off and sarcastic.

"You'd actually protect my corpse after killing me? Does this mean that I'm forgiven?" I feigned a tear, and wiped it away dramatically.

 _RUMBLE_.

"Yeah, _fuck you too_ , you asshole…" I grumbled, reaching into my front coat pocket for my Tact. Pad.

"Alexandria, play me Beethoven's Fifth. Start a loop on the Classical Station. Put it on shuffle. And keep the 1812 Overture off of the playlist. Damascus gets all kinds of crazy when he hears the cannonades." I instructed my computer.

It wasn't long after the well-known four note opening motif that Damascus pulled his head out of the ground, just to listen all the more closely to one of his favorites.

It was just another crazy trait belonging to my crazy old snake.

Damascus liked music.

But not just any music.

Ironically…

 _Classical music._

Or more specifically…

Anything with stringed instruments, namely pianos, violins and cellos. Guitars were alright, but Damascus didn't care for bass.

It had to be acoustic, and it had to be invocative.

"Follow Beethoven's Fifth with Yasunori Mitsuda's Radical Dreamers. That one almost makes Damascus cry." I grinned wickedly at my snake.

Damascus was perfectly silent and still.

He was somewhere else, somewhere where he didn't feel the need to be an ass.

Damascus was at peace.

It was as easy as flipping a switch.

The secret to staving off Damascus's backlog of foul history was all about keeping the snake engaged.

If I could keep Damascus focused on the here and now, then I didn't have to worry so much about him flipping out in the next Intermediate-Two battle.

"Cortez, Vauban, report." I released two more members of my squad, before setting my Trainer's Eyes status to 'Recovery Mode'. As long as my Tact. Pad remained stationary, I could refuse any Trainer challenges under the premise that both I and my team were settling down for a kip.

In other words, we weren't taking any calls, so go ahead and forget to leave a message at the beep.

"Vauban, come here. I want to check that Ekans bite you got earlier." I grumbled, sitting down and pulling out my trauma kit.

We were all exhausted. We'd made it roughly four klicks deep into the Crescent Valley, though we had started our journey into it almost twelve hours ago.

The distance we had covered might have sounded pretty shitty, but this was the Crescent Valley.

One of the most infamous Trainer highways in all of Kanto.

In order to get from mid Kanto to West Kanto, you had to cross the eastern branch of the Argent Mountain range. The safest passage across the eastern branch was through the Crescent Valley, which was situated between Mount Moon's outlying terranes. Though the geological layout of the Crescent Valley itself did not afford the settlements with an ideal terrain for building a shuttle system, Mount Moon could provide a vanguard stratum with a sufficient amount of limestone layers that permitted for the shuttle system tunneling.

Loosely translated into layman's terms, it was completely infeasible to build a shuttle system connecting Pewter City with Cerulean City, so the Kanto shuttle system financiers had elected to construct one as close as they could to the designated settlements.

Cerulean City's shuttle terminal started within Cerulean's city walls.

But Pewter City's side of the the shuttle terminal…

-Began fourteen klicks east beyond the Pewter City walls, in a little settlement known as Lune, which was located deep within Mount Moon's foothills.

Our destination was Lune, obviously. I had intended to make the trip in one day, but I should have known that because of the active Trainer's Eyes feature in my Tact. Pad…

I was never going fight my way through the Crescent Valley and into Lune in just one day.

As the safest Route connecting western Kanto with mid-Kanto, the Crescent Valley was a superhighway of tourists and Trainers alike.

You couldn't take five steps into the Crescent Valley without getting a dozen pings for a Pokemon Battle.

We were swimming in Trainers, some of them were just looking for something to do, and others were looking to accrue League heads.

And as much as I wanted to make Lune in a timely fashion…

...There was no way in hell that I could afford to pass on all those competition propositions.

Literally.

I financially couldn't afford to get penalized by the Trainer's Eyes for bailing on challenges.

I was now ranked among the Intermediate-Twos, which meant that my team was no longer squaring off against hordes of barely trained Rattatas and freshly caught Weedles.

We were starting to enter the big leagues.

As an Intermediate-Two, I could still accept or pose challenges to the Intermediate-Ones.

In the Intermediate-One battles, I was able to deploy both Cortez and Vauban quite effectively.

There was some stiff competition for the two, but we remained undefeated throughout every match.

But then we were approached by my fellow Intermediate-Two Trainers.

And just like me…

...They were packing some heavy artillery.

Vauban and Cortez were not ready for the Intermediate-Twos.

Clevers strategies and the Ranger's martial training could only go so far against the sheer power that some of the Intermediate-Two mon possessed.

When my first match against another Intermediate-Two resulted in my Vauban lead squaring off against a giant fucking Torterra…

...I calmly called a substitution before the first blow was dealt, and swapped in big daddy Damascus to level the playing field out.

But Damascus didn't quite level the playing field.

 _He fucking destroyed it._

That Torterra started sweating bullets the instant Damascus dived below ground.

It's a pretty standard strategy for the Onixia.

Go below ground where your opponent can't hit you…

-And then throw their ass a klick high into the sky when you launched yourself up out of the ground beneath them.

The League calls it-

" _Getting shafted."_

Because if you don't have a mon capable of engaging an Onix below ground…

...Then you've already lost.

That Torterra landed hard on his back when the stone obelisk known as Damascus erupted from the soil beneath him.

My previously Bulbasaur-mocking opponent flagged his forfeit.

I guess he didn't have a Druddigon on his Intermediate-Two team.

Cause if anything else was to follow an Onix into their turf below ground…

It would have been the same thing as committing suicide.

Damascus and I shafted the next four Intermediate-Two Trainers into submission. The fifth Trainer had a bit of a surprise for us, and I'm not talking about his rare as hell Dragonair lead either.

A fucking Braviary, who wisely decided to stay well clear of Damascus's burrowing antics.

But Damascus had been around for two-thousand years.

He knew how to handle an airborne pest like a Braviary.

My beautiful snake just hunkered down into a coil…

...And then just let the Braviary wind himself in the effort of scratching Damascus's indestructible carapace.

After having a small mound of boulders dropped on him, Damascus started to get bored.

So I broke out Alexandria, and pulled up Pachelbel's canon in D minor…

And my snake lifted himself out of his coil, just to start swaying in time with the gigue.

Then that tired Braviary slipped up on a raking strafe…

-And my Damascus plucked that sorry bird right out of the sky by the tail feathers, and flung the Braviary's ass into the dirt.

So much for air superiority.

I have total field supremacy when I deploy my Damascus.

Unlucky Intermediate-Two challenger number six was probably trying to figure out why this Ranger had a posse following him around.

A group of Trainers and tourists were clustered together, all jumping in unison with a cheer when Damascus shafted challenger number six into the history books.

It was a fucking beautiful thing, watching Damascus destroy the uniform earth.

There was just something about the rattling tremor that followed the long, anxious calm…

Then the sound of that angry rumble, heralding Damascus's incoming trajectory from below ground, my Onix aiming for that one-hit takedown…

 _And the fucking explosion of dirt when the previously solid land gave way to my gorgeous snake._

I think I've mentioned before that my Damascus looks like an exquisite art piece?

He's so stunning and unique in appearance, that most people can't believe that Damascus is an Onix when they first see him. He doesn't have the horn, the coloration, or the crags normally associated with his species.

 _But Damascus has the Onixia's attitude in surplus._

And one shafting was all it took to prove it.

Damascus is only three meters longer and four tonnes heavier than Diorite, Brock Aissatou's Championship Onix. That may sound like a lot, but given the massive physiological scale of the Onix species…

It was pretty much the human-equivalent size advantage of a measly five pounds in weight and ten centimeters of height.

Damascus probably isn't even the biggest Onix recorded in the League Registries.

But Damascus is the oldest mon known to science.

And two-thousand years of incessant conflict has endowed my snake with more warfare sagacity than any other mon in the Indigo League Registry.

Now if I could only figure out how to get Damascus to utilize that accumulated wisdom _without having him_ regress into the King of Mount Silver…

-Then I could sweep half of the Indigo League with just one mon.

Those six Intermediate-Two victories inspired me with a false sense of confidence.

Damascus was playing by my rules, and taking my orders.

How could anything possibly fuck us over?

We were fucking invincible, and every Trainer that we crushed ended up filling out the ranks in our growing fan club.

Chris Lebreau would have been proud of me.

I probably could have led that group of Trainers right into a Recruiter's office.

But then, Intermediate-Two challenger number seven showed me how misplaced that confidence was.

When his second mon hit the field, I just about laughed myself hoarse.

It was a fucking Magmortar.

That paunchy flaming duck-clown was gonna be blazing his way into the stratosphere when Damascus shafted him.

But the instant I gave Damascus the order to burrow, that devious Trainer revealed his hand.

He ordered his Magmortar to rush in towards Damascus's new tunnel…

...And then to fill the earthen channel with flames hot enough to melt sand into glass.

It was a pretty clever strategy.

That Magmortar was going to cook my snake inside of his own tunnel, using the earth around Damascus as insulation; which would concentrate the heat below ground.

Unfortunately for all the participants involved, Damascus did not take well to getting burned.

Not.

One.

 _Fucking._

Bit.

When Damascus violently erupted up out of the flaming earth…

He was no longer Damascus the Ranger.

He was the King of Mount Silver, fighting some long defeated Fire-Type opponent for supremacy.

Damascus arched his descent so as to land on the Magmortar.

I thought that my snake was going to crush the flaming clown to death.

But that Magmortar was well-trained.

The Magmortar got out of the way just in the nick of time, managing to evade a projectile Damascus before my snake could squish him beneath all of that rock-hard weight...

-If only to take an Onix's powerful tail to the chest, flinging that Magmortar at mach ten across the field. And then the King of Mount Silver raised himself up into the sky to finish off his fallen opponent...

When Damascus balanced his entire mass on just three tail beads, I knew what was going to happen.

Damascus wasn't hearing my orders to abstain.

My snake was going to kill that Magmortar like I would a bug.

I did the only thing that my terrified brain could think of.

I rushed into the center of the fray-

-And put myself bodily between the crippled Magmortar and the falling tower of Damascus.

The Magmortar almost cooked me alive.

He may have dying in a few short seconds, but that Magmortar was going to do as much damage to the Onix who killed him as he possibly could.

-Fortunately for the Magmortar, Damascus, and _me…_

Damascus's blue eyes widened when he saw a Ranger meat-shielding the Magmortar.

And my snake was able to remember who I was.

And in doing so…

...Damascus was able to remember who _he_ was.

It was quite the scare, even when Damascus adjusted his descent to avoid landing on me and the Magmortar.

Everybody watching the event went deathly silent.

It was pretty obvious that I didn't have complete command over this insanely dangerous Onix.

A point that was proven minutes later, after Damascus had suffered enough of me bitching him out…

...And made his ire known to all, when Damascus headbutted his CO's foul-mouthed and shouting ass into the dirt.

Everybody started panicking.

That crazy Onix had just killed his Ranger CO.

 _Let's get the fuck outta dodge before that angry white snake kills us too._

And the best part of the whole affair?

I was dumb enough to challenge Damascus to a second round.

There was no way that this pissed off Ranger was going to beat his own Goddamn Onix in a bitch-fit.

And the conclusion of my second challenge to Damascus brought us all to where we lay now.

In Damascus's coils, setting up camp for the night.

The Lune settlement, still ten klicks east of our location.

And a fucking army of Trainers between us and the Lune shuttle terminal.

I almost said, "Just fuck it all," right then and there.

But then Radical Dreamers came on the musical loop.

And just like Damascus…

I found a slice of peace in the acoustically evoked emotions of one of my favorite songs.

…

"God fucking damnit. I thought that we'd never see it." I growled to Cortez.

We were in the Frontier, and my hound was pathfinding me a safe route to the Lune settlement.

We had scaled the Route walls roughly an hour ago, and crossed the Hades's Swath into Mount Moon's Frontier. Sector Beta. The closest Ranger outpost was eight klicks north-east of our location.

In that single hour, Cortez and I had crossed an even greater stretch of the Crescent Valley than we had in all of yesterday.

The absence of Trainers hastened our journey considerably.

That said, I wasn't looking at the Lune settlement when I finally spoke to Cortez.

I was looking at the majestic Mount Moon.

"You know, when we're done with this League Business… I think that I'm gonna put in for a transfer to the Mount Moon Prime Outpost. Just look at that mountain…" I murmured in a breath of wonder.

It was beautiful. The grey-green foothills merged with the silver terranes at the blue base of the smooth sided mountain. The snow-capped peak still withstood the early spring weather, crowning the top of Mount Moon with a lustrous white veil.

"Goddamn… The Indigo Plateau has nothing on that mountain. Give me a moment, Cortez. I want a picture of this." I murmured. Cortez sat himself down at my ankles, looking up at that mountain with his standard calm expression. A fresh coat of orange fur had started to grow back on Cortez's left side, but the pink shade of his skin could still be seen underneath that bristly layer.

"Come on Alexandria, tell me that your personality matrix has something for this…" I mocked my Tact. Pad as I raised it to eye level, and angled the internal camera on Mount Moon.

Alexandria followed my photoshoot with a series of awed coos and whistles.

"Knock it off. Quit trying so damn hard." I growled, sliding my Tact. Pad back into my pocket before Alexandria could respond.

"What about you, Cortez? You have anything that you want to say regarding the moment?" I asked my dog with a cheesy grin.

Cortez just sneezed loudly, rolling his head when he did so, before heading off without waiting for my command to lead on.

"I'm losing it, Cortez. I never had it with Vauban, Damascus has tried to kill me thrice now, and you just blew me off. Darwin deserves his medal for exemplary service. He's the only one still fucking loyal to me." I joked with Cortez as I took off after him.

Cortez stopped advancing so quickly just to glance over his shoulder at me.

His green eye was giving me a look of approval, and his fucked-up purple eye was looking at me with a smile.

"I never asked you about your opinion regarding our mission, Cortez. Vauban and Darwin go where I go, and do exactly what I say when I say it; but you? Why are you still with my dysfunctional squad, dog?" I asked.

Cortez just kept leading on as if I wasn't holding a conversation with him.

"Come on, Cortez. Throw me a bone here. I've been trying to figure you out ever since we first met. But you haven't given me diddly-squat except more mystery." I casually threw a stick past Cortez's shoulder, trying to see if I could get a reaction out of him.

No dice.

That dog didn't even care.

"For fuck's sake, Cortez… You're worse than me. You don't have to wear the uniform for every second of your life, you know."

Cortez stopped walking.

I came up short behind him.

Finally, a confirmed hit.

"Cortez? You want to tell me something?" I asked.

Cortez started quivering.

And it wasn't the cold.

My hand went to Damascus's Heavy Ball.

We were in the Frontier. If something was sneaking up on us-

-False alarm.

Cortez turned around, and walked right past me.

I turned about, and followed that dog's movements with my eye.

Cortez slowly approached the stick that I had thrown past him earlier…

...And then Cortez carefully picked it up in his mouth.

Before that fucked-up dog brought the stick back to me, and dropped it at my feet.

I could only stare at him.

Cortez swallowed nervously below me, taking my hesitation as a bad sign.

Then I bent low, and picked up the stick-

-I held it in front of Cortez's nose…

...And then I flung that stick into the brush.

"Go get it."

Cortez bounded off in pursuit of the stick, leaving me beaming when he came back with it.

I fell to a knee before my amazing dog…

And I held his head against my shoulder when he approached me.

"You're a good dog, Cortez. You're a good dog." I felt something warm pooling in my eyes. Cortez's short mane offered itself as the ideal place to hide my face.

I was choking a bit, and my dog was acclimating to my expression accordingly.

"Okay. Okay, come on. Enough of that." I pulled myself away reluctantly, but kept a hand under Cortez's jaw.

And I held his watery gaze with my own.

"We're not alone out here, Cortez. And both you and I know it. Now just one last game of fetch before we carry on." I murmured, reaching for the stick.

But Cortez put his paw over the stick before I could grab it.

I chuckled when I looked into his calm eyes.

"Okay. Maybe later then." I ruffled my dog's head, and slapped his scarred rump when he moved past me to resume the lead.

But I wasn't done with my hound yet.

"Do you have a song that you like, Cortez?" I asked, pulling out the Tact. Pad.

Cortez looked at me like I was crazy.

"How about we try something new? It's not my favorite genre of music, but it kind of suits the setting." I was smiling like an ass when I punched in the new channel.

An accordion started wailing out to a bouncy little gammaldan polka.

"Do you want me to try yodeling as well?" I asked Cortez with my shit-eating grin on.

My dog sneezed at me, and tore off into the eastern Frontier, leaving me to chase his ass in cackling pursuit.

…

Mount Moon.

The second highest peak in the Argent Mountain Range, whose scale is topped only by Mount Silver.

Looking at this gorgeous sierra with a minorly trained geologist's eye…

It was hard to believe that this colossal mountain range was all of fourteen-thousand years old.

Under natural circumstances, the tectonic movements required to forge mountains like this would take millions of years, but in the century following the Brink Collapse...

There was nothing natural about the earth's disfigurement.

Regigigas. Lugia. Groudon. Kyogre. Palkia. Dialga.

Just to name the most infamous of the Lima-Threes.

They reshaped the face of the earth when they waged their war of supremacy on humanity and each other.

While Regigigas and Groudon duked it out on terra firma, Lugia and Kyogre beat the piss out of each other in the ocean blue.

Regigigas wielded the tectonic plates like Goddamn folding chairs in his brawl with Groudon, while the fucking God of Fire raised a new era of vulcanism to combat the Walking Mountain.

And Lugia reshaped the flow of the oceanic currents, all in the effort of trying to drive the King Orca out of the sea; while Kyogre matched the Abyssal Deity by melting the polar ice caps, adding more water into the oceanic currents than Lugia could psionically dictate.

Then all four Lima-Threes met at the coasts, and all hell broke loose.

It's amazing that our world still stands after that century of destruction.

It's staggering that humanity lived through it.

But the continents that we knew in the pre-Brink…

-Had all either been reshaped or lost in the Lima-Three's one-hundred years of strife.

What was left of the Australian continent became Hoenn.

The shattered and sunken remains of Europe became Kalos.

The burning ruin of North America became Unova.

The newly formed South American tectonic plate slammed into the desolate wastes of Asia, forming the Kanto and Johto regions respectively.

Greenland just disappeared for that century, when Dialga and Palkia, the Gods of Time and Space; chose that location to serve as their battleground. And the landmass that was puked out of the Great Northern Distortion Rift nearly a hundred years after Greenland had disappeared…

-That became Sinnoh.

"The Terra Divide," brought about by the waring Lima-Threes.

Thank God, that after a hundred years of rampant destruction, they all disappeared.

Nobody knows exactly where the Lima-Threes went.

There's a fucking supercity in Kalos, built inside one of Regigigas's footprints.

His last footprint.

Regigigas faded away into the Brink mid-swing with Lugia.

At least, that's the common theory.

Around the same time that the Lima-Threes disappeared, the Helios Brink Observatory located on the southernmost edge of the Oceania Reef recorded a massive vacuum of Brink event-continuity.

For whatever reason, it seems as though the Lima-Threes were recalled to their dimensional planes of origin.

Right after they fucked the world over.

What was left of humanity struggled against the lesser mon in the days following the Lima-Threes' eviction. Nearly two-hundred years later, the final summit of the International Congress of Governments sanctioned the Blackout Act, and before anyone knew it-

-Humanity was subjected to the Dark Ages by executive decree.

The cultures that rose from that ruined world would become the provincial Governments that we know today.

The rugged and live-in-the-moment people of Hoenn built themselves a proud nation through sheer social tenacity. The old Tribes of Hoenn are still very much the head of the Hoenn Democracy's governmental proceedings, and they have maintained a relative peace between their separate Tribes for a millenia.

The zealous freaks of Sinnoh, believing that they had been spared the Terra Divide by the divine intervention of Palkia and Dialga, constructed a Theocracy based off of that mythos. Though when you consult the Black Books of Sinnoh's one hundred years in the darkness…

-It sounds like they got the raw end of the deal.

But the crazy people who live in Sinnoh still worship the monsters that nearly killed them all as deities; apparently for not completely destroying them. At least, that's the Kantonese outlook on their religion. The Sinnoh Theocracy has painted a far more romantic scene of their Divine Lords, Palkia and Dialga.

Unova, having always been a nation of paranoid and self-righteous imbeciles equipped with more guns than wits, devolved into absolute chaos following the Terra Divide. A Stratocracy eventually took hold in Unova, but only after the population had quenched their thirst for senseless violence. Now, the barbaric people of Unova swear loyalty to their Fuhrer, whose every incarnation has promised the superior people of Unova the conquest of all the other nations for centuries ad nauseam.

Kalos, in its sudden return to the historical Dark Ages, took comfort in the return of the ancient monarchies that had once maintained a level of peace throughout troubled-old-europe's first Dark Ages. Curiously, Kalos also developed the strictest set of social expectations for their people, designing a nation where courtesy is practically enforced by law. The caste system and oligarchy are actually well respected in Kalos; but a society governed by social adherences is a two-sided beast. I'd love to visit Kalos to see what is regarded as one of the most beautiful nations in the post-Brink era, but if I did go there; then I'd likely end up beheaded for my excessive use of profanity.

Johto and Kanto? Due to the two distinctly separate cultures being suddenly thrown together as neighbors…

Well, we both had a pretty rocky start. Especially with each other.

The people of Asia have always been a peculiar lot. Quick to adapt to new technologies and ideas, but reluctant to part with their traditions.

And the people of South America? We've known hard times pretty thoroughly before. And because of our pre-Brink experiences, we weathered the post-Brink better than most other nations.

Both Johto and Kanto are populated by similarly hardy, industrious, and proud people.

But when you put the two together?

...We've had quite a few wars.

I'm not even going to recite who won which war, and who started the next war.

That's all counterproductive to humanity's continuation.

I'm not going to bash warfare either.

It actually did humanity some good in the early post-Brink.

We were desperate enough to revive old world technologies, and adapt them to this mon infested world, just to have an edge over the opposition.

The Governments on both sides of the Argent range utilized the wars between Johto and Kanto to unify their separate nations to a cause, and that unity was maintained in the eras of peace; if by nothing else, then by the fear of future wars.

But when Johto stabilized under the Imperium, and Kanto developed a functioning Socialist-Republic…

We didn't need to keep killing one another.

We had secured our people's futures in these scarred lands.

The next stage for humanity's development was global unification.

But just like the pre-Brink humanity…

...Post-Brink humanity still refuses to see eye to eye.

All of the nations have gone to war with one another at some point in time. Some alliances have been formed in those wars…

...Some have even lasted, like the Sinnoh-Kalos Concordant, and the Indigo Confederacy...

But the time for man unifying against unified man is over.

We need to come together as a single people, united to a shared cause; and face the real threat to humanity.

-The mon.

Though that's all probably impossible. As humanity's fossil record reveals…

Man has always hunted man.

And for all of our species genius…

Humanity still cannot separate themselves from the natural animal known as man.

…

Cortez and I left the Frontier on sight of Lune's walls. This was a completely new settlement in the Kanto region, whose formation had been financed by both the Pewter and Cerulean districts, and surprisingly, also by Giovanni Delimonto.

While Cerulean and Pewter had put down the funds for the shuttle system and perimeter walls, Giovanni Delimonto funded a side project on the slopes of Mount Moon.

There were three Stellar Observatories on Mount Moon. All of them built by Giovanni Delimonto. Two of the Observatories had been constructed on the highest altitudes of Mount Moon, but do to the dangerous weather patterns and indigenous mountain mon species, both high altitude Observatories were rarely awoken for use. They sat up on the snow covered peak collecting dust, with only a treacherous cavern system linking them to the lower portion of Mount Moon.

As far as most people were concerned, Giovanni's business attempt at reawakening our old-world technological wonders was just as ambitious as it was foolhardy.

It did look like a complete flop, given that neither high altitude Observatory had been utilized for over three years, but still…

...I can't fault Giovanni for trying. Without the movers and shakers of humanity, mankind would have never discovered fire.

But after the technical failure of the two high altitude Observatories, Giovanni, being the stubborn genius that he is; elected to fund a _third_ Observatory. This one would be a low altitude Observatory, protected by the Lune settlement's perimeter wall.

And this Observatory would never close.

The cosmological fascination that Giovanni's low altitude Observatory inspired paved the way for Lune's soon to be exclusively cosmophiliac population.

Everything about the settlement reeked of space odyssey.

The scant few streets were named after Astronauts and Cosmonauts alike.

"Yuri Gagarin Drive" shared an intersection with "Buzz Aldrin Road."

The only corporated establishment in town, other than the low altitude Observatory's Planetarium and the shuttle terminal, was a bar by the name of "Mir's Orbit."

Yep.

Thanks to the Pewter-Cerulean shuttle terminal, and Giovanni's lower altitude Observatory and Planetarium…

...Lune was a tourist trap.

But one of the new rising additions to Lune's intrigue, was the recent discovery of mon fossils permineralized within the Asian derived limestone that comprised Mount Moon's stratum.

A good portion of the Brink's inorganic expulsions had covered the Asian continent before the fallout reached any other landmass, and when South America had slammed into the eastern coast of Asia's tectonic ridge, the merging landmasses formed the Argent Mountain Range, pushing all of that alien limestone towards the surface.

So not only could you visit Lune for a weekend in the mountains and a cosmological education…

...But you could also brave Mount Moon and its tunnels for rare and extremely valuable mon fossils.

Fossil prospectors could make a fortune that would last a lifetime if they discovered a mon fossil with a salvageable permineralized DNA structure.

Scientist such as the likes of Professor Breitbarth, Professor Oak, and Doctor Fuji would bid themselves dry in the scientific race to discover and identify new species of ancient mon.

And daft lunatics like Chimera Industry's own Enzo Davinci would cough up whatever those scientists asked for, just to get his crazy ass hands on extinct Pokemon DNA.

That psychopath was the chief financier of the Cinnabar Lab's Fossil Revival Project, and as Brock Aissatou could attest…

-Enzo's resurrected fossil mon kicked ass in the League ring.

…

Cortez was dismissed as soon as we crossed beneath Lune's western gate. My dog was drawing a lot of attention on account of his scarring, and to spare Cortez the peculiar looks, I put him back in his pokeball.

I called Vauban out to take his place, deciding that a stroll through Lune's domestic precinct might do my chubby little girl some good.

There wasn't much to see on our way to the shuttle terminal. Cortez and I had made Lune right after sunset, after another successful sneak through the Frontier and our first devious alternate route past the Crescent Valley's expansive Trainer community.

I was a little worried when I saw the line spilling out of the terminal's subterranean entrance and out into Lune's sparsely situated commercial district.

I couldn't elbow my way through this crowd.

People were already packed like Finneon in a can on the entry steps.

And it wasn't just a one way flow either.

Frustrated tourists were shoving their irritable standee counterparts out of their way in their retreat from the terminal.

"Hey, what the hell is going on down there?" I asked one couple that managed to wrestle themselves free of the human wall.

"The damn shuttle is offline for repairs! The fucking Diglett tore up the track, and now we won't be able to leave Lune until sometime tomorrow after the rail authorities repair the line!" The tourist was frothing at the gills, and his wife looked no happier.

-But given the mess that they'd just crawled out of, I couldn't blame either one of them.

"Alexandria, connect with the shuttle main. I want a sit-rep on the Lune-Cerulean track ASAP." I ordered upon retrieving my Tact. Pad.

It took Alexandria all of four seconds to confirm the tourist's claims.

The Lune-Cerulean shuttle was out of commission.

"MOTHERFUCKER!" Looking at the scheduled repairs and testing procedures, as well as the time of vandalism, I could see that I was going to spending the night in Lune.

And I wouldn't have had to, if Damascus hadn't knocked me out twice yesterday.

"You stupid fucking piece of shit snake…" I hissed, glaring at his Heavy Ball.

I just wanted to get to Cerulean, and check in with Blackhat Team Seven's HQ. I was supposed to have been there tonight, but if this didn't beat all…

"Alexandria, get me a line with Captain Lewis. I bet she's gonna find some way to blame this whole thing on me." I grumbled.

Alexandria did I as I commanded, paging Cerulean Blackhat HQ with a priority hail and a request for a private comm.

"Warrant Officer Bastard, what have you to report?"

So much for hello.

"Captain Lewis, I regret to inform you that my Cerulean ETA has been delayed. The Lune shuttle is MIA. The Digletts ripped up the track, and now I'm sitting in Lune with my thumb jammed up my ass for the next sixteen hours." I reported. I heard Captain Lewis grunt on the other end.

"Right. Well it's not too important. I'll have Chris Lebreau reschedule your Gym match with Misty Willows for next week. Look's like you're going to spending some quality time in Cerulean, Ranger. I hope that you use it wisely. Is there anything else you have to report?"

Color me surprised.

Captain Lewis wasn't going to bitch me out.

"Nope. I'll report to Blackhat Team Seven HQ first thing when I arrive in Cerulean."

"Good. Over and out." Captain Lewis closed the line, and I put my Tact. Pad away.

"Well Vauban… That didn't go as planned. Thank God. Now let's get into that bar. I'm still feeling pissed at Damascus…" I worked my jaw, and stalked off towards Lune's lonely tavern with Vauban in tow.

…

"If you ain't twenty-sixth division, then you ain't shit!"

Those were the first words that greeted me and Vauban when we stepped into the bar. They were shouted out in a chorus, accompanied by cheers. I hadn't even walked halfway to the counter before another rallying battle cry sounded.

"If you ain't fourteenth division, then _you_ ain't shit!"

A swift survey of the establishment's tables provided me with the details. A pair of the military's finest squads were patronizing the joint, same as me. Roughly eleven Skinheads in total. One squad at their table in the far south, and the other squad situated at the western wall.

They seemed to be postulating over the supremacy of their separate infantry divisions.

What a bunch of pubes.

Everybody knows that the entire military is comprised of pussies.

Nobody joins the military looking for action.

Otherwise, they'd have put on the Ranger's stylish beret instead of the military's birth control bucket hats.

I lifted Vauban up onto the bar while I waited for the bartender to ask for my preferred poison.

It felt like a gin and tonic night, so go heavy on the lime.

"If you ain't twenty-sixth division, then you ain't shit!"

Scratch that.

I was gonna need something stronger than tonic.

Put some vermouth in that gin instead, and call it a martini.

"New transfer to Mount Moon, Ranger?" The bartender asked me as he mixed my martini in a cobbler shaker.

"Just passing through." I grumbled, glancing over my shoulder to the loudmouthed Skinheads.

"Don't mind them too much. They just graduated. Our little community hosted the military's sworn-in ceremonies. Those two units have been at it every night for the past week. They're about to get shipped out to Fuchsia, so we won't have to deal with their hyperbole for much longer." The bartender informed me.

"Well, I'm only here for the night. At least that's what they said at the shuttle terminal. Goddamn Digletts are wreaking havoc with the tracks again." I grunted, taking the first sip of my mixed liquor.

"If you ain't fourteenth division, then you ain't shit!"

Man, that line was already getting old…

"That a G.I. Bulbasaur? I've never seen a Ranger with a Bulbasaur before." The bartender was doing his hosting best to draw my irated glare off of the Skinheads.

"This here is my Vauban. She's the first Bulbasaur ever dispatched to the Rangers. Technically she's a Saboteur Class, but the Rangers don't have much use for giant bio-bombs, so my little girl here just rolls as a support unit." I explained, ruffling my wheezing little girl's head.

"You both look pretty done in. You see any action on your way to Mount Moon?" The bartender asked.

"Are you kidding me? The Crescent Valley is crawling with Trainers. We were getting pinged left and fucking right. It took us two days just cross fourteen klicks." I grumbled, draining my drink and presenting the empty glass to the bartender for another.

"Getting pinged by Trainers? You're not really a Ranger, are you?" The bartender sounded amused.

"Excuse me? Did you miss my badge? My SO bandanna? My knives? Or maybe you missed the giant Goddamn sparkly Crossed Arms dangling off of my left breast pocket?" My voice was dipping into the danger mode.

"Those could be props… Although it is pretty risky wearing that badge. You know that it's illegal to impersonate an active duty Ranger, right?" The bartender warned me.

My Tact. Pad was out, and my Trainer's License was being pulled up as the bartender whipped out my next martini.

"I think that I'll have my next drink on the house." I growled, tapping the _ACE_ header on my serial tag.

That shut the bartender up.

Normally, an ACE Agent wouldn't flippantly flounce their ACE certifications to the public outside of their relevant jurisdictions.

But technically, I wasn't an ACE Agent, so I could abuse the implied authority of my ACE stamped License as much as I wanted to.

"IF YOU AIN'T TWENTY-SIXTH DIVISION, THEN YOU AIN'T SHIT!"

For the love of God…

"Who the hell wants to be shit anyways?" I audibly growled over my fresh martini.

The sound of eleven seats being suddenly and aggressively vacated answered me.

The bartender started backing up.

"What's this? An off duty Greenback and his adorable little flowerpot?"

There was a pair of the military's junior-division squads standing right behind me, all unified against this lonely Ranger in their mutually wounded pride.

I continued sipping at my martini casually, not even turning around to pay the Skinheads any heed.

"You got something you want to say to us, Ranger?" Another Skinhead piped up.

"Nope. I think you boys have adequately demonstrated your pride in serving an outfit of shit." My voice sounded annoyed, and the Skinheads were getting even more pissed off by my apparent immunity to their intimidation tactics.

"Why don't you step outside with us, Greenback?" One Skinhead offered, his voice all friendly-like. I put my martini down, and lazily turned around to face the music, a mocking smile of ease playing on my face as I leaned my back up against the bar.

"Outside? What's wrong with the current setting? Too much potential action in here for you?" I asked the lead Skinhead with that smarmy smirk plastered on my face.

"That's a good point, Ranger. Why don't we just beat you senseless right here?" Another Skinhead answered my smirk with his own.

Vauban growled a reason for the Skinhead.

"Behave, Vauban." I warned my little girl, while the Skinheads fell back with a jeering whoop.

"The Ranger's flowerpot is packing some attitude! Why don't we prune the bitch after we're done emasculating her Ranger? She won't need that pretty little bulb once we rip her Greenback's dick off!" A Skinhead chortled.

That was it.

 _You do not insult my little girl._

I turned back to the bar with a iron look in my eye.

"Vauban-" My dead tone began.

"-Hold my drink. If you spill one drop of my free martini, then I'm gonna take it out of your hide. Let your CO handle this." I ordered, passing my martini into Vauban's awaiting vines.

Then I kicked out my bar stool, and caught it by the legs in one swift motion.

And then I broke off the padded seat of that bar stool when it connected with the lead Skinhead's polished dome.

I didn't last too long against ten infantry units. I'd knocked their leader out with the first blow, and then I whipped the shit out of their frontline with the emancipated legs of the bar stool, but the trained military personnel didn't waste too much time overcoming their shock at my unexpected assault, and they respond with the appropriate disciplined reaction.

My ass was dog piled up against the bar by the remaining ten infantry units, their fists flying into every inch of my person.

And I was answering their blows with my own at every available opening.

Sadly, there wasn't many openings that I could take advantage of.

My public flogging ceased for a moment, while my dazed ass hit the floor.

A pair of hands lifted me off of the wooden slats of the bar floor, and my eye regained its focus on a Skinhead's waxy crown, right before his fist slammed into my brow, putting me back down on the ground.

Another set hands picked me up.

My fists clenched.

I was ready this time.

No sooner had my person straightened out, then it was that I sent my retaliating swing.

Then my eye focused on the red beret dusting my shoulders off.

And my fist slugged the face of a bottle-wielding Skinhead who was sneaking up behind that red beret.

Another Ranger had jumped into the scrap to assist my beaten ass.

Correction.

 _Three Ranger Vets had entered the brawl looking to support their solo act on the front line._

I may have been punch-drunk and injured, but I sure as hell wasn't sitting this one out.

We were fucking Rangers.

It didn't matter that none of them knew who I was.

It didn't matter that these Vets were twice my age.

It didn't matter that I came from a foreign station.

 _It didn't matter that I had started this conflict._

Rangers never let one of their own fight alone.

We have each other's backs in all meetings of attrition, no matter what insignificant social stipulations separate us.

 _And these four Rangers were gonna prove that by taking on all comers._

The pubes from the military didn't know what the fuck they were dealing with.

Three Ranger Vets and one technical Ranger Vet versus ten fresh slabs of military graduate meat.

Despite our disadvantage of numbers…

 _These four Greenbacks gave the Skinheads absolute hell._

We were standing on a squad of unconscious Skinheads when the rest of the bar's patrons had suffered enough spectating.

There was a martial dispute being settled at the front counter.

It must have looked like fun.

Because soon after I bagged my third Skinhead…

...Everybody in the whole fucking bar started swapping blows.

The country yokels were taking turns beating each other's faces in.

The tourists and Trainers were connecting with one another over the tabletops in airborne tackles.

 _And the Skinheads were pushed back into private sector's fray._

True to the military's training, the Skinheads knew their CQC curriculum.

But training was all the Skinheads had.

The Greenbacks had both the experience and the attitude to back our punches up.

And we sure as hell weren't pulling them for the unseasoned Skinheads' sake.

Consider this whooping we're giving you a martial adherence to your clandestine preparations.

 _Think twice before you fuck with the Ranger Corps again, you military cunts._

The bar wide battle might have continued rolling on until only one group was left standing, but a hunched back old geezer whipped out a Pokeball and released his Tauros, before threatening to have his bull trample the lot of us for ruining his and his wife's fifty-second wedding anniversary.

The bar settled down pretty fast when that cow started braying and stomping his hooves. The tourists and Trainers found their seats as if nothing had happened between them. The yokels bumped elbows and raised toasts to one another. The Skinheads pulled their comatose comrades out from under the Greenback's feet, while all four Rangers glared at the pissed off Tauros, just daring him to make a move.

"Return to your posts, Rangers." The gruff voice of Ranger Vet Lieutenant barked from my left side when the Tauros was recalled into the old man's Pokeball. And adhering with my superior's order, all four Greenbacks pivoted about in perfect unison, and placed our orders on the counter.

"That's my girl." My severe voice growled when Vauban leapt up from behind the bar, and handed me my uncompromised drink.

Vauban was worried about me. I could see it in her expression. But Vauban recognized the berets around me. She wasn't about to expose her tender side in front of all these cold eyes.

"Warrant Officer. You ever consider locking down your mouth?" The Lieutenant Vet asked me, while a shit-eating grin split his face wide open.

"Fuck that. I have an opinion, and God forbid that I ever let a man live in ignorance." I replied.

That earned me some chortles from the Vets.

"Are all the Walkouts from Viridian Outpost as cocky as you?" The Lieutenant asked me.

I pointed to my SO bandanna, and then gestured to the Crossed Arms medal on my chest.

"I'm no Walkout, Lieutenant. When was the last time you saw a Walkout with these decorations?" I asked.

All three Vets froze.

"Holy shit-"

"No way."

" _-You're the Fucking Bastard, aren't you?!"_

Whoa.

They knew me?

"How the hell does Mount Moon Outpost know my name?" I asked, startled.

"Are you shitting me!? There isn't a fucking Ranger Outpost in all of Indigo who hasn't heard of the Fucking Bastard! You're that tough ass motherfucker who got mauled by a Snorlax and _fucking_ _walked it off!_ Kid, you're a fucking legend in the Corps! Bartend! Get the Fucking Bastard another drink! All of his rounds are on the Mount Moon Ranger Outpost!"

The Lieutenant was beside himself, and his unit was cheering loud enough to drown out the rest of the bar.

"I should have known it was you when you turned around to face the Skinheads-!"

"I thought that you'd be bigger-"

"-When did you earn the Crossed Arms?!"

Drinks were being shoved my way, and all the commotion was drawing a crowd. Even a group of the Skinheads had broken away from their moaning comrades to investigate the Rangers' outrageous behavior.

"I earned the Crossed Arms almost two months ago in Viridian Forest, fighting off the Venomoth." I replied. The Rangers exchanged a glance.

"What did you do to earn it?" The Lieutenant asked me, curious.

The entire crowd drew in closer. I swallowed. I wasn't so sure if I approved of this attention...

"...I inhaled a Venomoth haze in order to save a compromised unit of Rangers from the dust…" I answered hesitantly.

Even the tourists and Skinheads made a noise for me.

"Holy shit… First a Snorlax mastication, and then a Venomoth dusting? Can anything fucking kill you?" The Lieutenant asked me in awe.

" _A fucking Snorlax chewed on you?"_ A Skinhead erupted in disbelief.

"Good God, you wankmaestro! _This is the Fucking Bastard!_ Learn who your fucking heros are before you insult them!" One of the Rangers just about attacked the Skinhead over his ignorance.

From where I was sitting…

...This was just fucking weird.

I wasn't a Goddamn hero.

I had just lived through shit that had killed other Rangers.

"And after all that, you still serve the Corps as an active Ranger?" The Lieutenant asked me.

"I'm still on the payroll, though my designated objective has been altered due to my… condition." I answered self-consciously.

"What does High Command have their Fucking Bastard doing now?" The Lieutenant asked.

I cleared my throat.

"They have me… representing the Corps in the private sector…" I grumbled, downing my martini.

"...I'm the poster child for the Wounded Hearts project." I summed up as I slammed my empty glass down and glared at it.

"Shit kid, after what you've been through… Just wanting to wear that beret speaks volumes of your dedication. No one's gonna hold the Wounded Hearts project against you." The Lieutenant picked up on my body language pretty quickly.

"What's the Wounded Hearts project?" A Skinhead asked.

"It's an assistance program for disabled Rangers who still want to serve in the Corps. It's a relatively new division. Not many Rangers want to stay in the Corps after the mon have torn them apart." The Lieutenant answered.

"What? You're a disabled Veteran?" The Skinhead sounded shocked.

He was struggling to soak up this personal information pertaining to my health and status. He couldn't believe that I was Ranger Veteran. Probably because I was even younger than he was.

I didn't answer the Skinhead. I just carried on drinking the offered booze.

"Shit, I'd have never guessed it. You kick a lot of ass for a disabled Ranger." The Skinhead tried to make some respectful amends.

"That's because he's the Fucking Bastard, you twat! If a Snorlax couldn't ice him, then what chance does the fucking military have?" One of the Vanger Vets exploded.

"Come on, now. Let it go. I'm not too sore about it." I grunted, trying to diffuse the drama. I was feeling pretty fucking awkward.

These people were damn near revering me.

I didn't like it.

Not one bit.

"By the way… How's your head feeling?" The Lieutenant asked me.

"I take it somebody's fist fucked up my good looks?" I joshed, grinning like a motherfucker.

"Well, you look pretty messed up. You got a nice little hematoma forming between your eyes." The Lieutenant chuckled.

"Yeah, I can feel a concussion rising in my noggin. Aw well. I ain't worried about it. I've slept off worse." I grunted, tucking into the next drink.

Tough guy boasting was something that I could comfortably entertain in front of a crowd.

"You're gonna sleep it off? I don't think so, Ranger." The Lieutenant laughed.

"Naw, I'll just have Vauban whip the shit out of me if I start nodding off. My little girl takes good care me, don't you, Vauban?" I smiled down at my nervous Bulbasaur.

She gurgled back at me.

"Vauban was your Role Call mon?" The Lieutenant asked me. I nodded.

"This sweet little thing has been by my side through it all. I honestly don't know what I'd do without my floral shit-stick." I rolled Vauban roughly onto her side, and spun her around on the bar. When she came to a standstill, Vauban pulled herself back onto her feet and uttered a happy burb.

"Awww…" A tight cutie from the Trainer's group, who was endowed with one of the finest asses that I'd ever seen, cooed at Vauban's gasy expulsion; bringing about another chorus of laughs from the establishment.

"I gotta ask you about something, Bastard… Darwin. Is he real?" One of the Rangers asked.

"My bigass Magikarp? Yeah, he's real. What have you heard about Darwin?" I asked, curious as to how much of my story was known throughout the Corps.

"I heard a rumor about a Munchlax sized Magikarp earning a medal for exceptional service in the Corps. I just assumed that it was all hooey, but then someone added a line specifying this Magikarp's CO as the Fucking Bastard. So my scepticism was put on hold." The Ranger said.

"Yeah, my fat fucking joke saved my ass from the Venomoth, otherwise the Crossed Arms would have been embossed on my tombstone. Darwin is as real a legend as a Magikarp can get." I clarified.

" _You train a Magikarp?!"_ One of the Trainers looked at me with an expression that was borderlining ridicule.

"Yeah, a Magikarp that can actually swim upstream _while_ ferrying an unconscious Ranger on his face. Don't you dare diss my Darwin." I growled.

"That doesn't sound like a Magikarp… Are you sure that it isn't a Seaking?" The Trainer asked.

"I think that a Ranger can tell the difference between a two-hundred year old Seaking and a fucking obese Magikarp. Yeah, Darwin is a Magikarp. But he's gonna be the biggest, scariest, fucking ugliest Gyarados that you'd ever hope to see when I get his ass to evolve." I snidely replied.

"What other crazy shit do you train?" Another Trainer asked, the blatant overuse of profanity loosening everyone up.

"Well, there's Cortez, my scarred up Growlithe. He's kind of the Number Two in my squad. Cortez is as reliable and as loyal as all hell. My dog deserves better than me, but he sticks with us all the same. And then there's Damascus, my geriatric Onix. If you've been in the Crescent Valley recently, then you might have heard some horror stories regarding Damascus. He's been giving me no end of grief ever since he joined up with my unit, but that fucking rock-snake is damn near invincible. So we've elected to put up with his senile bullshit, instead of dumping his ass off in the middle of a lake." I answered.

"A Bulbasaur, a Magik- _A Gyarados,_ a Growlithe, and an Onix… That sounds like the start of a Championship team…" One Trainer murmured.

"That's a big fucking outfit for one Ranger. Do they all have specializations?" The Lieutenant asked me.

"Vauban is a Saboteur, Darwin is currently Sub-aquatic Reconnaissance, Cortez is a dual Pathfinder slash Hunter-Killer, and Damascus is a dual Siege and Bastion Class." I answered.

"Hell, that's practically everything short of an Interloper and an Aviation unit! What the fuck has High Command outfitted you with an army for?!" The Lieutenant asked me in shock.

"The Wounded Hearts project. High Command has me competing in the League-" I started to grumble.

But the crowd cut me off.

" _-WHAT?!"_

That was the whole damn bar; from the Rangers and the Skinheads, to the Trainers and the tourists.

"...High Command wants me to represent the Corps in the private sector. The League offers us an appropriately media-supported basis, and it allows me to hone my battling skills in a controlled environment; while providing a flexible enough schedule for me to support the Corps on the front lines." I explained to the gathering.

"That's fucking crazy…" One Ranger muttered.

"They let a mon-killer compete in the League? But article twenty-seven specifies-"

"-That article doesn't apply to me, or my G.I. mon. My squad and I have been testing beta-stage legislation ever since we accepted this mission. There's a distinct possibility of future disabled Rangers competing in League. It's all dependent on the outcome of my mission." I cut off the League diction spouting Trainer, and filled him in on my cover story.

"It sounds like the perfect outfit for the Fucking Bastard. If anyone can topple the League, _it's the Ranger's own Zane Bastard._ " The Lieutenant fixed everyone in the bar with a dangerous eye, letting them all know that his assertion was not up for debate.

"How far is High Command aiming for you to go in the League?" The luscious assed Trainer asked me.

Okay, it was my ACE Agent game time.

Put that scowling face on.

"High Command will settle for a couple of Badges. They just want to prove that the Rangers can control their G.I. mon for the League's competition standards. But on a personal agenda? I'm going all the way." I answered, draining my fourth drink, and pushing the rest away.

Too much indulgence was dangerous, given my current situation.

I didn't want to get drunk and say something stupid that would give ACE an excuse to gas me.

"All the way? You mean the League Seasonal Finals?" A Trainer asked in surprise.

"I mean Lance's Goddamn Throne. That fucking Snorlax cheated me out of a Black Beret. Now the only way that I'll ever be measured worthy of that calling, is if I can top the Dragon King." I growled, switching to ice water as my beverage of choice.

" _You want to be a Blackhat?"_ The Lieutenant asked me in bewilderment. Everyone in the bar was looking at me funny now.

No.

Those expressions weren't funny.

They were unnerving.

 _Was that admiration?_

"Goddamn, kid… You're a fucking Ranger alright. Holy shit… If we had more like you…" One of the Vets was actually getting teary eyed.

 _This was just fucking wrong._

"I've wanted that Black Beret since I was five. I joined the Corps in pursuit of my Black Beret. And I'll either die wearing one, or I'll die earning one."

It was rather morbid for an inspirational quote, but inspire my audience those morbid words did indeed.

Which only made me feel even more awkward.

Having that sexy Trainer putting her shaking hands on my arm might have gone somewhere fun in normal circumstances, but right now…

...I just wanted to be left alone.

"Thanks for the drinks, sir. And the backup." I chortled, tossing a hefty tip for the bartender onto the counter.

"I'd stick around and jaw-jack with you all, but my head's killing me, so I think that this Ranger is gonna toll the bell." I raised a salute to the Lieutenant, but he refused to answer it.

"At ease, Bastard." The Lieutenant ordered. I self-consciously lowered my unaccepted salute.

Then the unthinkable happened.

 _The Lieutenant and his Veteran unit raised their salutes to me, and the Skinheads behind the Rangers followed suit._

"It was an honor meeting you, Ranger Bastard." The Lieutenant announced in a firm voice.

I returned their gesture, and released them all from their salute, choking up when I did so.

 _I'm not what you think I am…_

"The honor was mine, Lieutenant." I murmured, turning on a heel and booking it for the door. Vauban was right on my tail when that door closed behind me, separating us from the crazy world that we were creating. I kept marching until I found a quiet part of town, free of any eyes and ears. I came to a gasping halt at a shadowed street corner.

"Vauban…"

Vauban pressed her flank up against my leg with a soft groan. She knew that voice. My little girl knew who I was at that moment.

"...What are we doing here?" My voice gagged as I fought back the tears.

…

I wasn't going to be sleeping for a while, due to the rising bruise in my brain, so I needed some way to occupy my time until tomorrow's shuttle ride to Cerulean.

But the Lune settlement didn't offer much in the way of distractions this late at night. Other than the bar, the only available facility was the Mount Moon Planetarium. The lower altitude Observatory stayed open throughout the late night and early morning, providing the public with a magnified showcase of the universe's cosmological events.

It was suppose to be pretty boring, but star gazing was something that I actually enjoyed, and the opportunity to visualize the celestial bodies' movements closer than the naked eye could naturally observe was greatly appealing to me.

Due in part to the late hour of the night, and the infamously tedious star-show, the Planetarium was almost empty when I bought my ticket from the counter. I elected to try out the dehydrated ice cream, and the Torchic-noodle-soup-in-a-tube for my midnight snack. Even if humanity hadn't been above the earth's atmosphere for a millenia and a half, we still held onto our age-old fascination with interstellar travel, and we eagerly replicated as much of that bygone era's trappings as we could in this age's diminished grandeur.

Slurping lukewarm and congealed Torchic noodle soup from a toothpaste tube isn't exactly most people's idea of a sophisticated zero-gravity meal, but I was sampling a little piece of our species's proud history when I snapped off the tube's cap with my teeth, and sucked in the greasy contents.

But the dehydrated ice cream?

Why can't I buy this shit at a grocery store?

Why didn't my G.I. MREs have this tasty shit inside their brown plastic packages?

Dehydrated ice cream works, man.

It just fucking works.

Needless to say, I was completely alone when I sat down in the star-show theater. As per Planetarium policy regarding mon in the theater, Vauban was returned to her Pokeball, but I had Alexandria keeping tabs on my vitals to help me resist the sleep.

The show was every bit as exciting as it was cracked it up to be. Just a perfectly silent spherical room with a projector casting images captured by the low altitude Observatory against the domed ceiling. A sizable orrery was suspended from the center of the concave skyhead, and the motions of the orrery's planets and sun reflected the movements on the OMNIMAX backdrop, adding a further element of wonderment to the experience for me.

It was serene, which was exactly what this weary Ranger wanted. I put myself in the center row of seats, affording a choice angle of both the orrery and the OMNIMAX display. I must have sat there for the better part of an hour, just staring at Jupiter and Uranus; until Alexandria propositioned a series of questions for me, pertaining to my knowledge of humanity's aerospace explorations.

I actually indulged the little shit by taking his quiz, scoring a ninety-seven percent on a hundred-and-thirty odd subject multiple choice questionnaire.

I would have scored higher, but I kept mixing up the names of the space shuttles 'Challenger' and 'Columbia,' and then I totally botched one question pertaining to the nickname of the hypergolic UDMH fuel source that played a part in the Nedelin catastrophe.

So sue me.

I'm only human.

I was rather enjoying myself, arguing with Alexandria over whether or not Joseph Shea's inadequate safety procedures during the Apollo I mission's hasty test launch had been the sole cause of Apollo I's downfall, but then something happened.

It took me a moment to process the sensation.

At first I tried to ignore it.

Then I realized what it was.

And the revelation locked me up cold.

I couldn't believe it.

 _Was he fucking haunting me?_

My concussion delayed my response, but I still reacted fast enough to find cover before he even entered the room.

 _Oh God, IT was him…_

TH.

Strutting casually into the OMNIMAX theater with a large styrofoam cup in one hand, and a paper bucket of popcorn in the other.

 _He actually ate food?_

Apparently... he did.

TH sat down a couple of rows further ahead of my hiding spot, munching on his popcorn and sipping from his soft drink.

He seemed completely oblivious to my sequestered presence.

He was totally silent, gazing up at the screen, his grey-rimmed shades placed upon the brim of his hat.

And I was sweating through his Ghosts' presence; all of their awful intentions made known to my biology in a complex series of symptoms, each attributed to a distinct bodily illness invoked by the malefic vices that all Ghosts harbor against mortal-kind.

I needed to leave. Now.

But if I moved, then TH and his Ghosts were sure to notice me.

 _If they hadn't noticed me already..._

So in risking futility; I chose to crouch on the fringes of the theatre, hiding between a chair and a divider, just waiting for something terrible to happen.

I didn't have to wait long.

"You can come out of the shadows now. You should know better than to utilize such mediums to stalk me." TH announced softly, and my heart stopped beating.

 _He knew where I was…_

Then I heard the footsteps, and I realized that TH hadn't been speaking to me.

Three familiar figures made their way down the theater's center aisle, after first ensuring that the theatre's only door wasn't going to be opening any time soon.

"Theron Halcyon." The curt voice of Agent Stockholm greeted the Devil of Kalos, as Agent Matusik and Agent Denethor came to stand at either side of their Executive's person.

"Good evening, Agent Matthew Noel." TH stood up, and cordially acknowledged the ACE Agent with a humble bow.

Agent Stockholm stiffened.

I don't think that Agent Stockholm was expecting TH to know his real name.

"I don't believe that we've met before?" Agent Stockholm asked TH.

TH just smiled at him.

God, that smirk was hideous…

"So to what indulgences of mine do I attribute this unexpected visit from ACE?" TH simpered, but one look at his smirk betrayed his illusion of ignorance.

TH knew why ACE was hounding him, and everybody in the room realized it.

"We have some questions for you, _Agent Halcyon._ Mostly pertaining to your recent security breach at the Pewter City gym." Agent Stockholm began.

Now I was frozen stiff.

 _TH was working for ACE?_

"The Pewter City Gym? Oh yes. Of course. I'm sure that the Director is quite… upset with my rather crass public performance in Pewter." TH sounded apologetic, but that smile twisted his vocal sentiments with its mocking insinuations.

"Why did you announce your presence in Kanto, Agent Halcyon? Were you not the one who originally requested anonymity for your asylum?" Agent Stockholm asked. TH just shrugged.

"I did request anonymity. How else was I to enter your borders peacefully? The _late_ Adamus Oscarin III proved rather… difficult to convince of my humble intentions." TH was still using that courteous voice, yet every discreetly sinister mannerism of his detracted from his sincerity.

"So you are aware of what happened to Adamus Oscarin III? That information hasn't even been made public yet." Agent Stockholm asked.

"Really, Agent? Just who do you think you're talking to? I saw the manner of Adamus Oscarin's death the moment I laid eyes on him." TH sounded amused, and his words chilled the blood in my veins.

 _What did those fucked up eyes of his see?_

I wasn't the only one terrified by TH's disturbing implications.

All three ACE Agents shifted uncomfortably.

"So what exactly are you trying to do, Agent Halcyon? Not one Analyst in ACE believes for a second that you entered the Indigo League for recreational purposes. Are you attempting to undermine ACE's credibility worldwide?" Agent Stockholm asked.

"Oh, ACE doesn't require my assistance in that regard. Your agency has done a phenomenal detail of degrading their own credibility in the international scene. Speaking of such matters, how fares Allan Arturia?" TH's voice sacrificed the cordial air, and assumed one far more cynical and demeaning.

"So you expected King Arturia's political reaction to your presence in Kanto?" Agent Stockholm asked, his voice growing cold.

"Well… When you know Allan Arturia as well as I do… His behaviors become rather… predictable." TH chuckled.

"Just what are you trying to accomplish, _Halcyon?_ " Agent Stockholm was losing his cool. TH was getting under his skin, and just from observing the interaction…

...TH made unnerving ACE Agents look like child's play.

TH didn't answer Agent Stockholm. Instead, the Devil of Kalos turned his back to ACE, and sat down in his chair.

"Are you going to cooperate with ACE, as you originally agreed to?" Agent Stockholm asked.

TH said nothing.

"ACE will uphold our end of the bargain. Your patience is all that we ask for. We guarantee that you will have the appropriate resources and support for your return to-"

"-Thanatos." TH whispered, waving his arm above him a lazy gesture.

The orrery sputtered and hissed as the sun at its core ignited with a grey flame.

Cold, sterile, grey light filled the room; killing all the electronics in the theatre as a Distortion rift opened, and one of TH's Ghosts made its presence known.

That wasn't a model of the sun sitting in the center of the orrery.

 _It was a Goddamn Chandelure, pouring its unhallowed light over the entire theatre._

The fucking soul-burner's light was bad enough, but the shadows it cast were even worse.

The shadows of the entire room _crawled_ with something vile from the other side.

I hate Chandelures above all other Ghosts just for that one fucked up trait.

 _The shadows come to life in the light of a soul-burner._

That Chandelure's cracked opera lantern was pieced together in a stained glass relief of a angel's tranquil face, but the gemmed seraph's gaze glowed the with Chandelure's own yellowed and bloodshot eyes. The pupils and irises were absent in those ghostly orbs. A Chandelure sees the world around them with their cursed light, not with their eyes.

The Chandelure's extremities flickered as tongues of grey flame ignited along the rows of candle wicks that ran parallel down the six coiling tarnished silver arms of an ivy-fashioned candelabra. Six curtains of red and white glass beads were draped in descending chains between all six arms, linking the blackened and leaved limbs together in a glass loom; altering the flow of grey light through the jewels' prismatic gleaming. The Chandelure's vacant eyes focused on this alien world, before the beaded crystal veils softly clinked together in a minor dissonance when the Chandelure turned to face its mortal lord.

"Tell your Director that I must contemplate the proposed time frame of his generous offer; and if your Director desires any future audiences with my person, then he can kennel his dogs and approach _The Black King_ himself." TH murmured, placing emphasis on the words, _The Black King._

It was a message.

A message for ACE.

" _How much do you know about Operation: Wounded Hearts?!"_ Agent Stockholm hissed.

TH snapped his fingers.

And the whole room went cold.

Five shadows rose from the slithering spaces in between the Chandelure's light to answer TH's summons, while that haunted beacon in the orrery faded away, until only the glow of its grey soulfire remain amongst the celestial bodies.

Five opaque shadows arranged themselves around TH.

 _Five human shadows standing guard over their King._

One was a headless man, holding himself against a bodily seizure, while a muffled laughter sounded from something cradled in the cross of his arms.

One was a man viscerally pierced through the left breast, a gaping wound that separated the bones and tissues of his ribcage from sternum to spine; his darkened form rattling with every wheezing breath.

One was a stooped old woman, whose unstable limbs, rickety figure, and phlegmy cough inspired a dread of some crippling illness greater than mere age.

One was a choking man whose head and arms were cast back, his long hair swelling and falling in an unseen ether; all the while his body was slowly drifting in the air, possessing an animation similar to that of a drowned corpse.

And the final one was the silhouette of a man shaking with an unheard scream, while a wavering heat mirage burned away at his bound body.

"I'd advise you to return to your Director with my missive, Agents… Or I'll have your silence serve as my herald to ACE instead." TH spoke in that courteous voice again, belying the warning that he had provided the ACE Agents with.

Not one of the ACE Agents were sticking around.

They broke and ran for the sealed door, fleeing TH and his Five Knights.

I wish that I could have followed them.

But my legs and mind were numb.

I couldn't move.

I could barely think.

I could only stare in horror at the Five Shadows and their King.

 _Did those shadows belong to TH's Ghosts?_

"We are alone now. Finally…" TH muttered in exasperation. Sinking into his chair, TH relocated his grey-rimmed shades from the brim of his hat, and mercifully placed them over his cursed eyes. Taking a leisurely draw from his beverage, and sampling a fist full of popcorn, The Devil of Kalos eased back into his late night pastime.

"...You can come out now, Ranger. As I have previously stated, we are alone."

Every Ghost's shadow turned to my hiding spot.

 _Oh fuck me…_

TH waved his hand, and the shadows of his wraiths faded away.

Except for two.

The Chandelure returned to its post at the center of the orrery.

And the hulking black shroud, sword, and shield of Pariah rose from the Distortion to swaddle the heart-cored Ghost.

"It's funny how we keep running into one another… It almost feels as if our repetitive convocations were... _Fated_." TH chuckled to himself, before setting his beverage aside.

"Ranger, _please_. There is no further use in hiding. The ACE Agents have left this little town of Lune altogether. You need not fear discovery."

Yeah. Hiding wasn't doing me any good.

And I couldn't abide running now.

That wicked voice was issuing a challenge.

A smug challenge.

 _And I would answer that challenge._

I straightened up, and adjusted my beret.

Then I marched right up to TH's row of seats, and I pointedly ignored the giant Ghost with the sword when I stood face to face with the Eidolon King.

"You do know that there's a penalty fine for releasing your mon in the theatre, right TH?" I growled, jerking my head over towards Pariah.

TH silently laughed into his fist full of popcorn.

"Have you forgotten my Waiver of Immunity, Mister Bastard?" TH chuckled.

I rolled my jaw in response.

"Please, have a seat." TH motioned to the chair next to him.

 _There's no fucking way in hell..._

I sucked in a deep breath through my nostrils-

...Steeling myself accordingly-

-And then I sat down next to the Devil of Kalos, and helped myself to his popcorn.

TH watched me stuff my face with his junk food, an amused look crossing his visage.

"The popcorn is rather vile, isn't it?"

I swallowed the stale mass of salt and butter, almost choking on it when the starchy shit passed down my cold, dry throat.

"I've eaten worse." I grunted.

TH chuckled, and relaxed into his chair.

"So Thanatos, huh?" I glared up at the Chandelure in the orrery.

"My beloved soul-burner, yes." TH murmured, following my gaze.

"He makes for a crummy cinema. But then as I recall, not many were fond of the Grecian God of Death." I grumbled.

"A fellow scholar of mythology? Interesting. I picked his name, actually. I'm rather partial to it." TH chuckled beside me.

"Well, you have shitty taste then. Who names their mon after the fictitious deities of ancient cultures?" I growled.

"A hopelessly romantic antiquarian. But tell me, Ranger... Who names their Pokemon after a lost era's conquerors and men of science?" TH retorted in that polite cadence of his.

"Smart, handsome, well endowed, and fucking serious motherfuckers." I replied.

TH actually leaned over his lap for want of breath when he laughed.

He seemed to think that I was funny.

The creepy fuck.

"Dear me, you people of Kanto… When will you ever learn decency?" TH cackled.

"Coming from _you?_ That's fucking rich." I growled.

TH stopped laughing abruptly.

TH straightened out so suddenly, that I was forced to consider the possibility of his Ghosts disabling my temporal awareness.

"And just what do you know about me, Zane Bastard?" TH asked, curious.

 _That you're a freak-_

"...More than I want to know." I answered.

A smile formed on TH's lips. But this wasn't the malicious smirk of The Devil of Kalos.

This was something else…

This was something personal…

"Fair enough." TH murmured, settling back against his chair.

I was silent.

TH's sudden shift in mannerisms had given me something to ponder.

 _Or they would have..._

But sitting there next to him, my mind wasn't exactly functioning according to rational procedure.

 _Escape._

-The door, only ten meters behind me.

 _Escape._

-The grey eyed freak, sitting to my immediate right.

 _Escape._

-The big ass Ghost with the big ass sword at my left, watching my every movement, standing one meter away from my person.

 _Escape…_

"This is an awful cinema, is it not?" TH violated the brooding silence, giving me a cause to jump. Waving his arm in a welcoming gesture to his soul-burner, TH banished his aptly named Chandelure from the confines of the orrery.

-Before the roar of soulfire sounded above us, and Thanatos reappeared overhead to cast his pale light across me and the Eidolon King.

I glared at TH. Thanatos's new angle offered us an even greater swath of the writhing shadows.

 _You fucking dick..._

"I wanted to congratulate you on your victory against Gymnase Meister Brock." TH whispered, his Kalosian accent even more apparent with the foreign elocution of _Gym Leader._

"I must say, it has been quite a long while since I've witnessed such a devious stratagem deployed in a Gym challenge. Or spectated a conflict so _entertaining_ …" TH chuckled.

I swallowed.

" _Thanks_. Coming from the man who almost killed me with his Gym challenge, that means a lot." I gave TH my own smirk.

Hint:

 _Fuck you._

TH cleared his throat with a smile.

"I'm _terribly_ sorry for that little altercation. It was not my revenant's finest day. Usually, mine Typhon is such a passionate wraith in his artistry. Honestly, I'm _almost_ embarrassed for his halfhearted performance in that battle..." TH smirked right back at the Fucking Bastard, handing me his own demented version of 'fuck you.'

"You are one messed up son of a bitch, TH." I said it slowly in deadpan, wondering what his response to my accusation would be.

I was ready for anything.

-Just not for what happened next.

 _The fucker reached across my uniform and grabbed the medal dangling from my left breast._

"The Crossed Arms? How quaint. Whatever went through your head when you deigned it necessary to forfeit your own life for your fellow man?" TH asked me in that polite tone.

I shoved his hand off my decoration, and glared at the Eidolon King for his impertinence.

"Something that would never cross your Godforsaken mind." I growled.

TH snorted.

"How little you know about me… Quite the pity for your decorum, such a merit was bestowed upon one so unworthy of its credence. If you had only discovered such respect for another's life sooner… Your Echo might still walk amongst the living…"

 _-What?!_

 _No…_

 _You didn't-_

 _How did you-_

" _F-fuck you-_ " I was panting when I spoke those words. My whole person was shaking with the rage and the grief.

Pariah's red eye lit up in the cavity of his heart, and a maddened pupil fell on me; that red glare was radiating with the Ghost's rabid hatred.

I didn't give a shit.

"Y-you… would fucking _dare…_ " The tears were boiling in my eyes when my voice broke.

My hand connected with the hilt of Doug's knife.

 _This little fucker had crossed the line-_

 _Nobody makes shit of my Echo…_

 _Not in front of me._

 _Not fucking ever._

I never got Doug's knife free of the sheath.

I couldn't move fast enough to keep up with TH's Ghosts.

Pariah hefted his sword above the shroud, and that massive blade fell towards me with an impossibly swift downwards stroke.

" _PARIAH!"_

The blade halted less than half a meter from my brow.

I was frozen stiff, staring up at that ruined edge, hand still grasping the leather-bound grip of Doug's Knife.

TH was furious.

And so was his sword-wielding Ghost.

"You are dismissed, _Pariah._ " TH spat through clenched teeth, his voice becoming fucking weird with the howls and the screams again.

Pariah didn't move.

"I. Gave. You. An order. _Now go_." TH's voice was no longer human. A multitude of different livid octaves hissed from the same mouth. Nothing on earth could utter that hideous intonation with a living breath.

Nothing, save for _The Eidolon King._

Pariah checked his stroke, and lifted his blade back into a resting position.

And then TH's huge fucking Ghost swung his sword so damn fast that I couldn't even process Pariah's actions until after he had stormed off into a Distortion rift.

Then the sword-torn Distortion rift sealed, leaving only Thanatos and I as the lonely subjects in TH's court.

"I must apologize for my prior statement, Ranger." TH whispered, his raspy voice returning to what passed as normal.

I turned to him, the fear, anger, and grief still very much inscribed on my face.

"That was quite low of me. Inexcusably low of me." TH murmured, a new emotion inflected in his voice.

He actually sounded…

 _...Sincere?_

"I will take my leave. I wish that I could offer some parting condolences, but I have little want to trouble you any more than I already have. Good evening to you, Mister Bastard." TH stood up and made to leave, while Thanatos faded away into the Distortion, as the the Eidolon King marched straight past me.

TH paused right before he made the aisle.

"However..." The Devil of Kalos pivoted on a heel to face me.

"-I think that I shall offer you my pleasantries instead." TH extended his hand to me in a gesture that I had absolutely no want to mimic.

 _But I couldn't ignore the challenge that danced in those shade hidden eyes._

I rose from my seat, and took TH's frigid palm in a firm handshake.

"Though a foreigner I may be, I still feel statutorily obligated to serve as a representative of our illustrious brotherhood's highest echelon. So at the conclusion of this conclave, as the Reigning Kalos League Champion; I, Theron Vergil Halcyon, both officially recognise and heartily embrace your kindred spirit into our venerated fold. _Welcome to the Indigo League, Ranger Zane Bastard…_ " TH whispered, that wicked smirk crawling up the left side of his face.

Then TH released my hand, and disappeared off into the shadows of the silent theatre.

He didn't use the door to leave.

Theron didn't like opening doors for himself.

TH's Ghosts bore him away on a Distortion rift, sparing me of both his and their cursed presence.

And at last, I was free.

I was free of TH.

Free of his Ghosts.

Free of my charades.

Free to collapse on a theatre chair.

Free to curl in on myself.

Free to break down and weep in secrecy for the ghosts of my lost Echo...

 **...**

 **.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.**

 **...**

 **Distortion Scream:** An event that occurs whenever the Distortion breaches the material plane. Due to the temporal/mass fluctuations generated by a Distortion rift, a peculiar set of acoustic notes are perceived by any audio receptive organisms beyond the Distortion rift's event horizon. Accompanying this acoustic "scream" is a sudden influx of null-matter and dead-time. These overlapping interdimensional mediums effect any and all material/organisms that operate through sequential reactions. Though the Distortion scream is rarely harmful on the anatomical level, the psychological aftereffects of temporal/mass displacement can lead to a variety of abnormal and often self-destructive behaviors. In the rare recorded cases where physiological damage was sustained from exposure to a Distortion scream, subjects developed curious abrasions on the extremities of their bodies. These abrasions held certain taxonomic similarities to human bite signatures and human fingernail scratches.

 **Halcyon Thelemalibri:** The Halcyon Thelemalibri is regarded as one of the most extensive eidolon-veneration texts written in the modern world. Containing vast quantities of information pertaining to the nature of the spirits, the Halcyon Thelemalibri is essentially a collection of scientific notes and poetic expositions that have been developed, collected, and elaborated on by the Kalosian Noble House Halcyon. The original documents pre-date the post-Brink Dark Age, implying that the Halcyon Family has been experimenting on the Ghosts well before the first recorded Channeling ritual was performed. The contents of the Halcyon Thelemalibri have been adopted and adapted by almost every other eidolon-veneration cult that formed in the post-Brink era, diffusing the Halcyon Family's spiritual knowledge throughout all of the provincial regions.

 **Lima-Three:** Military lingo for "Legendary Tier Three." The Lima-Threes have been absent from the earth's ecosystem for the past fourteen-thousand years. The Lima-Threes were the most aggressive proponents of the Terra Divide, effectively reshaping the continental structure of the earth for all time to come. Though many nations revile the Lima-Threes for the destruction of the natural world, certain subcultures revere these impossible monsters as deities. The most popular example of such pagan-veneration societies is none other than the Theocratic nation of Sinnoh. Though the Lima-Threes have all but disappeared from the present-day earth, the lesser Lima-Twos and Lima-Ones remain active within mankind's sphere of existence. Throughout the post-Brink, these lesser "Gods" have repeatably brought destruction to both the environment and human society; though thankfully, nowhere near the same scale of the planet altering Lima-Threes.

...

 _ **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** __Happy Halloween?  
_


	8. Chapter VII: Water and Stone

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 **The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero**

 _Written by,_

 **Vile M.F. Slanders**

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" _ **The King who is situated anywhere immediately on the circumference of the conqueror's territory is termed the enemy."**_

" _ **The King who is likewise situated close to the enemy, but separated from the conqueror only by the enemy, is termed the friend of the conqueror."**_

 _-Vishnu Gupta, Arthasastra: Book VI, "The Source of Sovereign States."_

 **-v-**

 **Chapter VII: Water and Stone**

 _He rides his bike to work._

 _He eats his meals from a can._

 _He rarely shaves, and though he frequently bathes, soap is seldom used._

 _He lives out in the Frontier._

 _In a tent._

 _His greatest vice is an insatiable appetite for jelly filled donuts._

 _Sugar coated only, and the filling must be raspberry._

 _Some people say that he just can't leave the Trainer's life behind him._

 _Some people just call him a madman._

 _Some people once called him, 'The Mad King.'_

 _You know who he is._

 _He is an environmentalist._

 _A philanthropist._

 _A capitalist._

 _And a war-profiteer._

 _He is a self-made multi-billionaire._

 _An ambitious genius._

 _A mortal legend._

 _His name is Enzo Davinci._

 _The founder of the global trade phenomenon, Chimera Industries._

 _What is his goal-?_

"-Cut this weird ass biography crap out right now. What do you mean, what is my goal?"

"Um… Mister Davinci-"

"You can just call me Enzo, sugar."

"Uhh…"

"Look toots, I know that you've probably heard the rumors. I had rabies once. Just once. I got better. I'm not gonna start frothing at the mouth and bite you on the jugular. So you can lighten up."

"I ah… I just…"

"Babe, don't take the sweet talk seriously. I have absolutely no interest in those soft parts of yours hidden beneath the skirt. And don't take that statement the wrong way either. It's not that you're ugly. It's just that you're not my type."

"Uh…"

"Oh. Don't tell me. It's twitching again, isn't it?"

"...Is it supposed to do that?"

"Hell if I know. I wasn't exactly sober when I finished the thesis. Actually, I never finished the thesis. I got halfway through the development stage, looked at what I had designed thus far, said 'fuck it,' and then I just went ahead and prototyped the alpha model. And then I jammed it into my head."

"Umm..."

"Do you smell cotton candy, or is it just me?"

"I… I- I think… I don't know what to think anymore."

"Yeah, I really wish that I could make the buzzing stop too. I think that I need to have this thing cut out. I had strong reasons to believe that an Abra's medulla oblongata would have provided a sound platform to start with, you know? But now? I'm beginning to think that this surgical augmentation is going to drive me insane before I develop ESP. I might need to reconsider-"

" _-You put an Abra's brainstem inside your head?!"_

"No. Hell no. There's no room for an Abra's brainstem in my dome. I just stripped out an Abra's Phrenosensu node, spliced it with my own DNA, and then I let the sample go cancerous. Then I salvaged the untainted genetic material that persisted through the sample's post mortem. After that, I introduced the untainted genetic sample into another Abra's Phrenosensu node, and repeated the process in order to filter out even more of the genetic discrepancies. And then I did it over, and over, and over again; until I finally had myself a completely benign Enzo Davinci Phrenosensu node. And then I had my surgical team insert that perfect specimen inside my right eye, and wire the Phrenosensu node's nerve endings into my occipital lobe. Thus far… It's been a complete failure. I haven't even been able to pass a single Zener Test with a positive score yet. It's too bad really. I was rather looking forward to playing weekend poker with an ESP advantage, but it seems that I'll be going under the knife again instead. What a bummer."

"...Are you insane?"

"You're the one interviewing me for a biography. Author's opinion? You tell me."

"You're insane."

"...God, all that fucking cotton candy is making me feel _real_ peckish. Where did I put my donuts?"

"...You ate them. An hour ago."

"Fuck me. That was the last box..."

"Can't you order another?"

"NO! YOU DON'T GET IT! THAT WAS MY LAST BOX! AND NOW-!"

"-...-"

" _-And now it's all gone…"_

"...Ar-are you actually crying over an empty box of donuts?"

" _What would you do?"_

"...Order a new box of donuts?"

" _HEY!_ THAT WAS MY IDEA! DO YOU HAVE ESP?!"

"...N-no?"

"...Oh shit. I need to take my meds. I think that I'm losing my mind."

"...You... don't say?"

"Have you ever jammed a big ass syringe into your eye before?"

"...!?"

"I'll take that as a _No_."

"You're not going to do that in front of me, are-?!"

"Oh, that stings…"

"..."

"That's smarting…"

"..."

"I bet this wouldn't hurt so much if you weren't watching me do this…"

"..."

"Okay, I'm done now."

"...I think that I'm gonna vomit…"

"Not in my office-! _Uhg…_ "

"...M-mister Davinci? Are you okay?"

"Yeah… It's just kind of weird, you know? Having an organ that's not supposed to be in your eye socket starting to swell up? I can feel the inside of my head right now. That's pretty weird, right?"

"...That is pretty weird…"

"Okay… I'm not smelling cotton candy anymore. Or feeling hyperemotional. And I think I have control over my mouth again…"

"...Why did you put a psion's voodoo gland inside your head?"

"Better question. Why not?"

"...Because it would drive you insane?"

"But I didn't know that it would drive me insane before I put it in. Now I do know that. So even if I don't develop ESP from the alpha-stage, I still discovered something valuable from this ordeal. Something that might come in handy for the beta-stage of this little project."

"...So you just took the plunge? Without checking to see how deep the water was first?"

"That's kind of how I operate. I think that's why most people call me crazy."

"Well… _You are crazy_..."

"Okay."

"...Um… Can we get back to the interview?"

"Sure. Where were we at?"

"Your goal?"

"..."

"Mister Davinci?"

"...My goal?"

"...You do have a goal, don't you? I mean, your Chimera Industries-"

"I never intended to raise Chimera Industries. It just… took off, and somehow, I took off with it."

"But you put so much effort into building a Pokemon marketing empire-"

"No, I didn't. I just did what I loved doing. Cooking up new ideas, and then putting them into the flesh. Someone else decided to commission me to do that. I didn't even choose the name, 'Chimera Industries.' That name came out of a department that I never knew my financiers had provided me with. I'm not joshing you. I'm rudderless. Everything that I've ever had happen to me… Just kinda happened."

"But before Chimera Industries, you took on the Indigo League! You must have had a goal back then! You're a Quad-Flame Finalist! You earned the fourth quota victor title eleven years ago in Indigo's 1064th Seasonal Finals! You defeated the opposing fourth quota victor in a landslide triumph! You even posed a challenge to the Reigning Champion Lance-"

"Here it comes..."

"- _And then you bailed at the last moment, just so that you could be the first man to patronize a new donut shop opening up in Celedon?!_ "

"...Have I ever mentioned that I really, really, _really_ like my donuts?"

"No one believes that! Everybody says that you got cold feet, and that you backed out of a fight that you couldn't win!"

"Don't ever say that in front of _Tenacious._ I'm telling you right now, he was fucking pissed at me for pulling out of the League. It took me four years just make it up to him and rekindle our friendship. Tenacious could've kicked the shit out of Lance without my brilliant strategies, and I denied Tenacious his chance at fighting the very battle that he had been born for. He's still a little sore about it..."

"...Do you really believe that you were going to beat Lance with just one mon?"

"Heh! Tenacious wiped out the entire 1064th Indigo League's Finalist quota roster and Elite Four _solo!_ He was still in prime shape after we laid waste to Giovanni in order to _earn_ the right to challenge Lance! It was just Tenacious and me the whole time, starting from Victory Road, and going all the way to that final match! We _owned_ the Indigo League! You tell me that Tenacious couldn't do it!"

"Well, we'll never know now. You refuse to even attend the Indigo Seasonal Finals as a spectator."

"Yep."

"Can I ask why?"

"Sure."

"..."

"..."

"... _Why?_ "

"Because."

"...?"

"..."

"...Are you serious?"

"Always."

"...Why am I even wasting my time interviewing you?"

"Good question."

"Do you think that this is funny? Is this just a game!? Is everything just a game to you?!"

"Sure."

"...I can't believe this."

"Okay."

"You know what, Enzo? I believe you. I believe that you have absolutely no clue in regards to what you want! I believe that you're just the product of pure luck and favorable circumstances! I believe that you never had a single goal in your entire life!"

"Okay."

"I'm done! I'm finished! You will never hear from me or my firm again! I'm just going to tear up this single paragraph of your biography, because there is no story to you, _Enzo Davinci!_ "

"Okay."

"...-"

"-...-"

"-...-"

"-...aaaaHHHARGG!"

"..."

"..."

"Damn. That woman has some serious anger issues that she needs to address."

"..."

"Hey Sammy? Could you send up another box donuts to my office? And while I'm still coherent, could you also schedule me for an operation to have this Abra's tumor removed?"

"One box of donuts and an appointment with the chop shop? I'll make the calls right away, Mister Davinci."

"Thanks a tonne, Sammy. Have I ever mentioned that you're my favorite secretary?"

"Everyday, Mister Davinci. Oh, and there's a line on hold for you. It's on the Military's channel."

"Oh, that's right. I forgot all about that... Patch 'em through to my office, and put that donut delivery on hold."

"Right away, Mister Davinci. Is there anything else that you need done?"

"...Yeah. Send Tenacious up to my office. I'm gonna want his input on this."

"I'll call the Ranch, and have them ship him out. I imagine that it will be about five minutes before he arrives at your office. Did you want to answer the military's call now?"

"...Sure. I'll deal with the formalities while I wait for Tenacious _._ Send me that line, and then close this channel. You know the drill."

"Of course, Mister Davinci."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"... _Right._ Let's see what problem the Director of ACE has for me today…"

…

 _They weren't human._

They had never been human.

That was just an illusion.

A tactic that TH had devised to scare the wits out of his opposition.

Those Ghosts were just imitating human form in order to inspire a horrifying implication; all in the effort of securing a mental advantage over TH's correspondents in ACE.

They weren't human.

They had never been human.

They weren't human.

They weren't human.

 _They weren't human…_

My eyes snapped open when the shuttle hit the patched tracks. A brief message over the PA system from the conductor confirmed that it was only a small bump, a temporary discomfort that would not harm the shuttle or its cargo. The Diglett had ruined the tracks before, and the rail engineers had always managed to keep the tracks properly maintained.

There was no need to worry.

Except that I wasn't worried about the tracks.

I was grinding away at what had transpired last night.

 _And I was worried sick, let me tell you._

TH was haunting me. I was convinced of this.

He knew something about Operation: Wounded Hearts.

TH had set the entire stage last night, calling ACE out in full view of my hiding place.

TH had shaken ACE to the core, just to get them to reveal something to me.

 _The Black King._

That was a callsign. A reference.

A reference to TH.

And as Agent Stockholm had let slipped…

... _The Black King_ was also a part of Operation: Wounded Hearts.

The thing was, I had never been told of TH's involvement in my little Operation.

And judging from Agent Stockholm's reaction…

...TH wasn't even supposed to know that _he_ was a part of Operation: Wounded Hearts.

Last night, TH had suggested that our repeated run-ins with one another had been a device of fate.

That was just Theron being an ass.

ACE had thrown the two of us together on some stage, and neglected to inform either one of us about the other's role in it.

I was beginning to think that the Operation: Wounded Hearts that I had undertaken was just a farce for the _Real Operation: Wounded Hearts._

So why did TH go through all of that trouble just to enlighten me to ACE's secondary agenda?

What did he stand to gain from my awareness of ACE's ploy?

 _Why was TH interested in me?_

It wasn't just ACE's misleading Operation: Wounded Hearts that had brought TH and I together.

My private discussion with the Devil of Kalos had revealed quite a bit more than my addled brain was capable of processing at the time.

Fact: TH was above ACE's authority.

Fact: TH had been working for ACE.

Fact: TH had betrayed ACE.

Fact: ACE was offering TH something big, something that they hoped would buy TH into their cause.

Possibility: TH was dissatisfied with ACE's offer, apparently due to the delay that ACE required for converging the assets together for his payment.

Possibility: TH had absolutely no interest in accepting ACE's offer.

Possibility: TH might have actually been using ACE to secure something that he wanted, effectively reversing ACE's manipulation scheme.

Fact: Whatever TH was interested in, it had something to do with the Indigo League, Operation: Wounded Hearts, ACE, and _me._

 _But why me?_

TH had made it very clear last night that he had a _personal interest in me._

TH had "invited" me to sit down beside him and engage in a "casual conversation."

There was practically nothing casual about our conversation. Virtually everything that TH had said or done during our exchange had been scripted.

 _-And I had played right into the Eidolon King's hands._

Discussing the names of scientists and Grecian Gods?

-TH had used that train of dialogue to learn me.

When TH had postulated that Typhon _could have_ killed me in his match against Brock?

-That was TH informing me that he had spared my life.

When TH ripped on my Crossed Arms, and degraded my Echo in front of me?

-That was a test. TH had wanted to know what drove me, and how far it could push me.

But even with TH's scripted interrogation, there were certain events that were completely adlibbed.

When TH asked me what I knew about him, and I replied with "More than I wanted to know?"

-TH's reaction implied that my response had hit something personal in him. And TH couldn't conceal that wound.

When Pariah had tried to cut me in half?

-TH had panicked. I wasn't supposed to die, and his Ghost was going to fuck that up.

When TH had apologized for his Echo debasing retort to my assertion regarding his "Godforsaken mind?"

...I don't know if that was just TH trying to buy my confidence, or a genuine attempt at making amends. But I had insulted TH when I insinuated that he didn't understand self-sacrifice; that much was certain.

And when TH shook my hand, and spoke those pretty words about "embracing kindred spirits?"

 _Theron Halcyon had named me as his rival._

Back in my Pewter City ACE sponsored inquiry, Agent Stockholm had spoken at least one honest word.

TH and I were going to meet in the League.

TH and I were going to duke it out for a Throne.

Thanks to Operation: Wounded Hearts, TH and I were fated to become each other's rivals.

...Back then, in that shuttle trip to Cerulean City…

...I didn't know exactly what that rivalry was going to do to the two of us. I don't think that even Theron knew how our rivalry was going to affect the both of us.

...But our rivalry was going to involve a whole lot more than just the League.

 _...A world's worth more than the League._

…

Cerulean City.

Lovely place actually. I can't find all that much to complain about in Cerulean City.

-Except that I'm not really welcome there anymore.

Cerulean City was an old port town. Before Vermilion City had opened its naval base to civilian traffic, Cerulean was the only available port for ships coming into Kanto from the northern Unova and Kalos Regions.

Because of the commerce Cerulean developed with those two nations, a surprising amount of both Kalosian and Unovian culture has shaped Cerulean's social makeup.

There are Kalosian-style Barista Cafes and Unovian Cask Whiskey Distilleries sitting quite comfortably next to one another in commercial Cerulean.

Same with the Kalosian Garden shops and Unovian Weapon shops.

And Kalosian Fashion Apparel Retailers and Unovian Pharmaceutical Recreation Establishments.

...I think you get the idea.

But beyond the apparent trappings of those foreign nations, it didn't pay to be a foreigner in Cerulean.

Some rather… colorful history arose in Cerulean City, due to the politically unstable relationships between the Kalosian immigrants and the Unovian refugees.

Kalos and Unova do not get along.

-At all.

Unova has invaded Kalos more than they have any other nation, and Kalos…

Well, pissing Kalos off isn't exactly the best idea.

Needless to say, Kalos answered Unova's repeated invasions with blood for blood.

-And then some.

The Kalosian people may be the most cordial individuals that you will ever meet in a social setting…

-But in times of war, they'll stoop even lower than the Unovians.

Which is quite a feat, when you consider just how savage the people of Unova are.

And unlike Unova…

Kalos has a powerful ally.

Sinnoh and Kalos work even more effectively together than Kanto and Johto do.

And Sinnoh hates Unova almost as much as Kalos does.

So despite this region of Kanto offering the Kalosians and the Unovians an honest chance at a fresh start…

Some feuds just run too deeply to be forgotten in places far removed from their origins.

Almost one hundred years ago, Cerulean City burnt to the ground.

Twice.

In the span of a decade.

All because of a Kalosian and Unovian conflict that spilled out from their respective nations and into the Kanto region.

Cerulean City served as an unofficial battleground for a war that our nation refused to take part in.

The first burning was relatively minor. The stage for Cerulean's first blaze was set when the adopted Kalosians and Unovians of Cerulean dug trenches in the downtown region of Cerulean City...

-And then they began killing one another throughout the entire utopia, catching numerous Kantonese civilians in the crossfire.

Then, eight years later in a similar Cerulean skirmish brought about by the same foreign war…

Cerulean City caught fire for the second time, this conflagration ended up spreading much farther throughout the city's precincts than the previous blaze had. Cerulean City became an absolute hell, while yet again, the Unovians and Kalosians bloodied the streets with each other and the innocent Kantonese casualties. And when the Kantonese military declared martial law in Cerulean City, and moved in to quell the rising anarchy…

The Kantonese natives of ruined Cerulean City collectively decided that they had suffered enough of foreign wars.

And as for the people of Kanto?

...We can be pretty brutal too.

The Kantonese natives of Cerulean City just executed virtually every foreigner within the City walls after the second raze of Cerulean.

No warnings, no requests for recompenses, no get out of town by tomorrow mornings…

...Just more vengeful bloodshed.

After that, Cerulean kind of closed its port to foreign immigration ships.

And when Vermilion opened its port to global traffic…

Most foreign vessels found Vermilion's naval bastion port worth travelling the extra klick for; due to the absence of Cerulean's treacherous Wrecker Cape…

...And the lack of Cerulean City's indigenous population and their prejudices.

All of those Unovian and Kalosian storefronts in Cerulean?

They're not owned by Unovians and Kalosians.

The people of Cerulean just kept the foreign family names on the signs, and offered the same kind of goods, in an unsuccessful attempt at drawing more tourists into Cerulean City.

After the massacre of Cerulean, the City and its people were subjected to a state of economic decline, but it was a gradual decline.

Wrecker Cape still has a rich bounty of seafood year round.

And the limestone foundations of the Cerulean district is riddled with caves.

Many of Cerulean's caverns were natural.

-But some of those earthen holes were artificial.

As well as serving Kanto as the chief producer of seafood, Cerulean also developed a pretty respectable opal and calcite mining trade.

The grandeur of Cerulean City may have been drastically diminished since the second razing, but there is still plenty of life kicking about inside of Cerulean City's marble walls.

Just not the diversity of life that made Cerulean so appealing a hundred years ago.

…

I wrestled my way out of the Cerulean City terminal and out into the briny Cerulean air.

I had to take a moment just to drink the location in.

There's just something about Cerulean….

...Something about the glorious marble architecture weathering down into a dilapidated state.

Something about the rustic setting imposed upon yesteryear's finery.

Something beguiling about the shabby regalia that Cerulean's people and buildings don as casual vestments.

Excessive. Quaint. Honest. Unapologetic. Crude. Refined.

It just doesn't seem like it should work, and yet-

...Cerulean City works quite well.

No one dreams of making it big in Cerulean. Everyone is just content with an honest day's toil in the mines and at the dock, followed by a cheery night at the pub.

No one really aspires to greatness in Cerulean. The general population just desires a simple life along the Kantonese coast.

Everyone in Cerulean enjoys simplicity that is, except for Misty Willows.

Misty is the youngest girl of the influential Willows family. Misty was the fourth daughter of Geraldine Willows, who has maintained the position of CFO in Cerulean's largest shipping industry for two whole decades even amid the Cerulean export market's recession. Geraldine's first three daughters were more than happy to follow in their father's lead, educating themselves in both global commerce and business management...

...But the youngest red-headed daughter?

-I really think that Misty did half the things she did, just to piss the rest of her stiff-necked family off.

Whereas the other three Willows girls were prim and proper, professionally self-portrayed, and cleverly quiet…

Misty was the wildchild.

The firestarter.

The antagonist.

While her older sisters would be attending their courses in Applied Ergonomics, Misty would be cutting class and stowing away on Cerulean's fishing trawlers.

And once Misty made her presence known to the grungy fishing crews…

Misty demanded to learn the skills of a commercial angler.

And despite her pampered upbringing, which was due in part to her father's financial resources...

-Misty was a true-blooded Cerulean, meaning that this young red-headed loudmouth wasn't afraid of getting her hands dirty.

It was quite the scandal, from Geraldine Willows's perspective.

It was made even worse when his underaged daughter publicaly displayed her rather extensive knowledge regarding humanity's carnal desires.

Misty just about wound up disowned when the press caught word of some of her 'technically' illicit pastimes that were carried out in international waters.

But in international waters, the laws are written by the Captains of the ships, and enforced only upon that ship.

So Misty fucking the Captains of a few fishing trawlers out in international waters, despite her youthful age, wasn't 'technically' illegal.

But it was a sign of things to come.

You see, not only was Misty utilizing the fishing trawlers and their irreputable crews for satisfying her sexual appetite and learning deepwater fishing techniques…

...But rather than accepting pay for her services to the trawlers, Misty instead requested a portion of their catch.

Yep.

Misty's first Championship team came exclusively out of a trawler's drag-net.

Misty had an Angler's eye for a catch's size and health.

And Misty also had a Trainer's eye for a mon's battle potential.

"The Tomboy Mermaid."

Misty had originally earned that title from the horny trawler crews.

But when Misty entered the League with her team of deep sea behemoths…

The nickname took on a whole nother meaning.

At the conclusion of Misty's fifth Gym Match, the Tomboy Mermaid was chalked up as a League prodigy.

Misty had started her League career by deploying an exclusively aquatic team. A Type-specialist team, which quickly drew the scrutiny of the League's Analysts. It was a diverse and strategically formatted aquatic team, which under Misty's capable training and leadership, brought Misty unto the Indigo League's Victory Road in just her second year of competition.

Unfortunately for Misty, she didn't pass the Victory Road Trial the first time around.

Fortunately for Misty, she left the Victory Road Trial with both her life, and the better half of her original Championship team, intact.

So in her third year of League certified competition, Misty made sure to brush up on her Frontier survival skills as well.

The second time around at Indigo, Misty beat the Victory Road Trial, and then crushed her opponent in the qualifying round. And when Misty made one of the first quota victor ranks in the finals, she called Lorelai Nikitin out into the ring...

...And then Lorelai Nikitin beat the piss out of the Tomboy Mermaid in Misty's very first Elite Four challenge.

-But Misty didn't quit there.

Oh hell no.

That spiteful redheaded Cerulean Harlot came back for a third attempt at the League, practically drowning anyone who was unfortunate enough to wind up between her and Lorelai Nikitin at the start of the Finalist rounds.

And when Misty called Lorelai out into the battlefield again…

...The war concluded with Misty Willows earning the first Flame on her year-old Finalist License.

Then Misty secured the second quota victor rank, and called Agatha Poe out into the ring in order to challenge The Matron of Whispers for the Tomboy Mermaid's second Flame...

...Right before Agatha Poe and her infamous Triplets made another ghost story out of Misty Willow's third attempt at the League.

After her defeat at the hands of Agatha, Misty posed a challenge to Cerulean's previous Gym Leader in the post-finals...

-And that vindictive ginger left Indigo Plateau with a League recognized station as a Gym Leader.

Now Misty was prepping for her fourth attempt at the League Seasonal Finals.

And everybody knew, based off Misty's previous catfight with Lorelai…

-That Agatha Poe was next on the Tomboy Mermaid's shitlist.

Though Misty was Kanto's lowest ranking Gym Leader with only a Mono-Flame on her license, Misty's rough and tumble backstory, combined with her exceptionally entertaining League performances…

-And those sexy bikini model photo shoots…

...Meant that Misty was one of the most popular Gym Leaders in Indigo League's entire Kanto division.

Women wanted to see this free spirit of theirs conquer the Indigo League, and have Misty place a Queen on the Throne again; seeing as womanhood had suffered aught but Indigo Kings for over a century.

Men just wanted an autographed picture of Misty Willows wearing her scantily finest, embossed with her lipstick print kiss on the rim.

-And everyone not in Misty's League fanclub?

Well, we each had our own desires of Misty.

-And some of us…

 _...Are a bit more ambitious than others._

…

I headed straight for Cerulean's Blackhat HQ in the City's northwestern precinct, as originally planned.

Blackhat Team Seven's HQ wasn't a Reserve Outpost.

It's far more modern than that.

Due to Blackhat Team Seven being stationed within a city's perimeter wall, there are quite a bit more luxuries available to Blackhat Team Seven than what you'd typically find on a Reserve Outpost.

-Like a fully functioning septic system, an endless reserve of hot water, air conditioning and reliable heating, and all the electricity that the Blackhats would ever require to power their unnecessary entertainment appliances.

From a Ranger's perspective, all of these conveniences were unbecoming of the beret.

But if High Command was going to take away the Blackhats' video game consoles, then High Command was going to remove a prime incentive for any Ranger to work for a Black Beret.

And at any rate, not one Ranger in the Corps was going to gripe about the Blackhat's indulgences.

The Blackhats had earned their wanton conveniences, and sadly, they rarely had a chance to enjoy them.

The Blackhats were some busy motherfuckers, and if they weren't killing the endless armies of feral mon; then the Blackhats were generally attending to their biological necessities so that they could function enough to kill the next batch of hyper-lethal mon.

So when Blackhat HQ's desk jockeys cleared me for access to the Blackhat's personal quarters, I wasn't surprised at all to discover that the joint was void of Blackhats. A quick perusing of the recent Blackhat mission statements currently put Team Seven roughly seventy klicks south of Cerulean, lethally engaged with a-

-Snorlax.

Oh boy...

...I hope that they gut the fat fucker alive.

After uttering a string of curses and ill-wishes against Snorlaxkind, I turned my attentions onto the other artifacts strewn about Team Seven's Barracks. The same basic military setup applied to the Blackhats' accommodations as it did in all Ranger compounds. The CO had his own Quarters, and the rest of his unit shared living space in a billet.

Beyond a collection of personal effects, such as family photos, wine corks, playing cards, and the occasional action figure; each Blackhat's bunk area was decidedly spartan. I could pick out Captain Lewis's bunk pretty easily. There were only three photos and a torn out page from a poetry book tacked to the inner wall of her accommodations.

Though the page of poetry struck me as odd, only one of the photos did.

Each photo was of Captain Lewis. One was an old service photo from her time in the Military, way back before she joined up in the Ranger Corps. The Military's young auburn soldier was wearing the exact same straight line of mouth that old Captain Lewis still wore beneath her red beret in the second picture; this one serving as Captain Lewis's first Ranger identification photo.

But the third photo…

...Was of a very young civi version of a beaming Mary Lewis, arms strangling a grinning boy years younger than her, who was likewise topped with the same auburn wavy hair that spilled out onto Mary Lewis's shoulders. Both the boy and the young Mary Lewis were struggling to hold a pair of ice-cream cones away from their brawl, and looking mighty happy doing so. I suspected that it was a sibling picture.

That photo was the only image I ever saw of Captain Mary Lewis smiling. It was bit of a shock for me. I had originally assumed that Captain Lewis was born with her perpetual scowl and a rank look in either eye.

-At least, that's what she let on in our interactions. Then the poem's title caught my attention.

" _Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"_ -Dylan Thomas.

-Okay.

...That poem actually suited Captain Lewis rather well.

My curiosity satisfied, I returned to the center of the Barracks, and sat down at a lounge table. The table bore some small hint of the Blackhat's lifestyle. A game of cards and ashen cigars were awaiting the return of their Blackhats, who had hastily smothered their tobacco and placed their hands face down when the latest call went out.

After twenty minutes of drinking in every tangible aspect of this silent hall, I found myself wondering how much longer it was going to take Team Seven to finish murdering that Snorlax.

As it turned out, it didn't take Blackhat Team Seven too much longer to drop that fresh Delta-Five than it took for them to slay the Snorlax who had mauled me.

The base's siren went off, alerting the staff to the return of Blackhat Team Seven.

Both the base's medical personnel and their mon Wranglers were scrambled, and I quickly rose from the Barracks to accompany the deck crews out into the the docking yard. I entered the yard just in time to witness sixteen colossal airborne Gyaradosia buzz the open compound, rolling their sails and venting their flight bladders for landing preparations. The Great Wyrms were hissing out vaporous expulsions through their mouths, attempting to decrease their atmospheric buoyancy by vacating the compressed helium stored within their flight bladders, all while the Gyaradosia's massive Pterois-like dorsal and pectoral sails fanned and furled about in the air like a colorful hurricane. Each showy fin was even bigger than the draconic Dendrobranchiata that slithered majestically at the heart of those painted membrane clouds. These huge spine-ribbed aerofoil fins provided the Gyaradosia with the necessary thrust for aviation, though these mighty sails were currently being utilized for the opposite purpose; as the Serpents strained against their own buoyancy for want of lower altitudes.

The Wranglers were tossing cables up to the Blackhats saddled behind their Gyaradosia's armored rostrums, barking positions and countdowns out to one another as the deck crews tugged the living zeppelins onto firm ground. Each deck crew deftly assisted their assigned Blackhat from their designated mounts, before stripping the saddles clear of the Gyaradosia's rostrums. With the hang time relief complete, the Wranglers yielded the Dragon-Snakes over to the medics for their routine post-conflict checkups. Then the Blackhats formed up, and all sixteen Elites turned over their Gyaradosia's Heavy Balls to the Deck Chief, before each and everyone of the Blackhats received the same efficient medical examination that was being administered to their mounts.

Within three minutes, every Gyarados and Blackhat had been cleared by the medical personnel, and then it was rest and recuperation for both the mon and the men. The Wranglers flagged in the slop trolleys for the Serpents, and all sixteen members of Blackhat Team Seven moved in formation towards my current location.

I didn't need an order to stand aside at attention and salute.

These were the Blackhats, and these Elites didn't bark for their respect.

To my shock, the entire Blackhat unit came to a halt before me, and a Lieutenant Colonel Rionaldo answered my salute.

"Chief Warrant Officer Bastard." The CO of Blackhat Team Seven met my eye.

"Sir." I respectfully replied.

Lt. Col Rionaldo just chuckled as he released me from my salute.

"At ease, Bastard. Welcome to Cerulean City. Glad to see that you could make it." The Lt. Col extended a hand to me. Quickly overcoming my disbelief, I shook Lt. Col Rionaldo's hand firmly, before placing my own digits behind me in the at ease stance.

"I hope that you weren't making too many friends while you were awaiting our return, Ranger." The Lt. Col indicated my facial bruises with a grin.

"Just a bar fight with some Skinheads in Lune, sir. I've been aught but honorable conduct since entering Cerulean City." I replied.

Half of Blackhat Team Seven started chuckling. Captain Lewis wasn't among the chortling section.

"I hope that you gave the Skinheads hell, Bastard." The Lt. Col whispered dangerously.

"I gave them better than that, sir. I gave the Military a taste of the Frontier." I answered. A round of whooping Blackhats followed my clandestine boast.

"Good to hear it, Ranger. Fall in with Team Seven. If it's mess time for the Wyrms, then it's mess time for the Rangers. Let's get something to eat before we discuss any further pleasantries." I couldn't believe that the Lt. Col of Blackhat Team Seven was formally inviting my worthless self into his outfit.

But my disciplined feet heeded his order, even while my mind struggled to accept this honor. Team Seven parted ranks, and I took my place between Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Roscoe. There was no order to march.

The Blackhats didn't need orders to act.

All seventeen Rangers stepped off on the same foot, and every pace was measured in equal length to perfection. The timing was flawless. Such a mundane practice was executed in adherence to the strictest codes of martial etiquette, yet so casually did Team Seven achieve this unity; that we seemed a single beast made of separate parts, all acting out these mirrored motions in an unmarred coalescence.

-And I was a part of that animal. For that brief moment, I received a tantalizing taste of my lifelong dream.

This was what I wanted. This is what I lived for.

-This was the whole reason for why I had chosen to wear a beret.

...And then not even five paces later, Lieutenant Roscoe ripped ass in a particularly long and foul gust, and a sudden convergence of Blackhat fists connecting with his person ruined the moment.

Laughing and mocking with one another, Team Seven's immaculate formation collapsed, and a disorganized unit shuffled into the compound, red faced and winded.

...Well…

Even so...

-It was still pretty damn good.

…

"So Captain Lewis tells me that you secured the Boulder Badge through some unconventional means, Bastard." Lieutenant Roscoe grinned at me over his cigar. The evening meal had been sumptuously prepared and summarily consumed. The Blackhats had their own gourmet cooking staff, and whatever the Blackhats asked for dinner was exactly what the Blackhats ate.

Tonight it had been live-boiled Clauncher and distilled butter, served with seared Kobe striploin taken right off the ass of a pampered Miltank; who had previously lived her entire life in the lap of malt beer and barley oat luxury.

It was one of the best damn things that I had ever eaten, and it was served inside a Ranger Compound.

 _Yeah. I really wanted to be a Blackhat now._

"I took advantage of the pen in my Gym Battle with Brock. I earned myself both a Badge and a promotion well ahead of its time for my devious little misdemeanor." I replied. Lieutenant Roscoe snorted, before offering me one his fat cigars.

"Unovian fermented Petilil weed. Imported. Those bloodthirsty savages can actually make a decent cigar." Lieutenant Roscoe announced as he cut the tip and lit up my cigar with a match.

 _A decent cigar?_

 _-_ If this was just decent, then it would have been sacrilege to put anything finer between my teeth.

"I guess Unova can actually make something incredible other than a war. Damn…" I removed the cigar from my mouth and stared at it in admiration for a moment, before putting that pungent butt back on my tongue. Lieutenant Roscoe just chuckled.

"Warrant Officer Bastard." Captain Lewis's stern voice was butting into the conversation just to ruin my cigar.

"I just received word from ACE, stating that they lost contact with Alexandria last night. Any idea what might have happened?" Captain Lewis asked me. I pulled out my Tact. Pad for the first time since the Planetarium.

"What the hell?" My surprised voice exclaimed. Alexandria was in lock-down. I entered my bio-signature and pulled up Alexandria's OS menu.

Alexandria's status had him listed as "Gone to Code".

"Rescind it." Captain Lewis ordered over my shoulder. I entered the OS prompt, and punched in the command that would reboot Alexandria's quantum matrices.

About two minutes later, a fully functioning Alexandria greeted me with a diagnostics system log.

"His Distortion contingency software tripped last night at twenty-four-hundred hours. Why the hell did it activate?" Captain Lewis was glaring at my computer suspiciously.

"I haven't got a clue…" I was looking at my own Tact. Pad, completely mystified.

-In appearance.

ACE wasn't telling me something, and I would be damned if I let on that I knew about it.

"Probably just a bug. You said that it was a new update, didn't you Lou?" Lieutenant Roscoe asked.

 _-He called his superior 'Lou?!'_

"Could even be Alexandria testing out his new software. But he should have known that he was going to require his operator's assistance in rescinding manual stasis." Captain Lewis ignored Lieutenant Roscoe's breach of etiquette and looked right at me. I just shrugged.

"Alexandria never alerted me to any test runs. If the dumbass computer decided to run the software without first informing me, then there's not much that I could've done about it." I pulled up Alexandria's diagnostics system log again.

"Look. He never even sent me a message. So why did you enter stasis, Alexandria?" I asked my Tact. Pad.

"..."

" _Distortion anomaly was detected."_

" _..."_

"What kind of anomaly?" I asked.

"..."

" _Distortion seep."_

" _..."_

"In Lune?"

"..."

" _Affirmative."_

" _..."_

"-Don't ask it any more questions, Bastard." Captain Lewis ordered. I put down the Tact. Pad, and turned to her, curious.

 _-So you're in on it too?_

"What don't you want me to know, Captain Lewis?" I asked slowly, a curl of smoke rising my cigar. Captain Lewis gave me a severe eye.

"The only thing that I will tell you, Warrant Officer, is that last night in Lune; ACE made contact with Theron Halcyon. The three Agents that established communication with Theron Halcyon barely escaped him with their lives. I suspect that Alexandria might have come in contact with residual Distortion emissions, which were likely formed by Theron Halcyon's presence in Lune. You were in the same town, at the same time as Kalos's most wanted; and you didn't even know about it. Lucky for you." Captain Lewis reported.

That testament didn't give me enough to work with.

I didn't know if Captain Lewis was aware of ACE's Operation: Wounded Hearts farce, or if she was just trying to protect me from TH.

But either way, I couldn't trust Captain Lewis. Or any other members of the Blackhats who were involved with Operation: Wounded Hearts.

"You mean that ACE couldn't send me a message, and tell me to camp out the night in the Frontier instead of Lune? Cause that'd be a whole lot more safe than sleeping anywhere near that grey-eyed freak." I grumbled. Captain Lewis didn't pay my remark any heed. She was still staring at my Tact. Pad with a dubious expression plastered to her stern countenance. Lieutenant Roscoe poured a pair of crystal snifters full of Cognac, and passed one over to me.

"Well, enough about that hogwash, Warrant Officer. What's your plan of action for engaging Willows? We can't expect a repeat performance of the Pewter City Gym battle. Your get out of jail free card was a single use tactic." Lieutenant Roscoe asked me.

"The League has already patched that loophole up?" I asked, a grin splitting my face around the cigar.

"It took them all of an hour to write a new penalty clause into article twenty-seven. You give that stunt another go, Bastard; and the Rangers will never compete in the League again." Captain Lewis informed me.

"Damn. I was gonna request the temporary use of a Blackhat Gyarados for my match against Misty." I joked. Lieutenant Roscoe snorted.

"You wouldn't be getting my Wyrm for that League bullshit. Ol' Tisiphone would rip the Cerulean Gym apart if you deployed her against Misty." Lieutenant Roscoe chuckled.

"So what is your game plan, Ranger? You have almost a full two weeks to coordinate your strategy. How are you going to start?" Captain Lewis asked me. I settled back into my lounge chair, filling my mouth with a drag from my cigar, and chasing it down with a lick of Cognac before exhaling the fumes.

"My first preparation for this war? It's pretty basic, actually. Get to know your enemy." I grinned at both of the awaiting Blackhats.

…

Misty Willows had a routine. Just like every other human being on this planet of earth, the Kantonese Gym Leaders preferred to live by a comforting set of daily norms.

Misty would wake up at five-and-a-half-hundred hours, and begin her morning stretches, before the Cerulean City Gym Leader decided to attend to her morning breakfast.

Misty typically dined on a glazed croissant with her Kalosian espresso con panna, which was followed by a side of freshly picked mountain berries to top off the early morning repast.

After breakfast ended at six-and-a-half-hundred hours, Misty headed straight into the Cerulean City Gym, and began her daily training regimen with her Championship team. On days scheduled to be free of Gym challengers, Misty then went to work training her Major, Intermediate, and Novice teams in basic battle technique reinforcement. On such challenge free days, Misty didn't leave the Cerulean City Gym until twelve-hundred hours.

At twelve-hundred hours, Misty waded through the daily mob of her fans, both tourists and locals alike, everyone of them pleading the Cerulean City Gym Leader for her photo or an autograph.

At twelve-and-a-half-hundred hours, Misty Willows scaled the northern wall of Cerulean City, and made her way out into the Frontier just to escape the clinging crowd.

R&R for the Tomboy Mermaid was a topic of much debate, but the common consensus stated that Misty spent the next six hours of the day swimming, fishing, and sunbathing in privacy; out on the white sanded shores of Wrecker Cape's Frontier lagoons.

At roughly nineteen-hundred hours, Misty Willows entered Cerulean City through the northern gate, and from there she returned to the Cerulean City Gym for one final practice session with her Championship team.

After that, it was fine dining followed by exclusive dance clubs, and then another day's conclusion met in bed at twenty-three-hundred hours.

It sounded like the perfect life for a professional League Trainer. And I was looking to exploit it.

At eight-hundred-hours on the day following my rendezvous with Blackhat Team Seven, I was standing outside of the Cerulean City Gym with a nefarious intent.

A little Ranger sweet talking accompanied with the Fucking Bastard's own infamous charm, and an easy mark amongst the Cerulean City Gym laundry staff was giving me a tour of the facilities; right after both she and I had hastily washed off the fun stuff in the Cerulean City Gym's shower room.

Her job really wasn't all that glamorous, but the Gym's dirty utilitarian necessities was exactly what I was after. Helping her push a linen cart around the Gym while she collected the bundles of spent towels from the Gym's numerous aquatic departments may not have been the most entertaining chore, but I made it the best job ever with a steady stream of lewd deadpan banter and casual flattery.

-I know that I'm a terrible human being.

I had this poor girl wrapped around my finger, and I didn't even feel guilty about ditching her simpering blushes when she secured me what I wanted.

-A towel, taken from the Gym Leader's own personal locker room.

But just to make it up to the sweet little lass, I did buy her one hell of a lunch.

That has to count for something, right?

...Yeah, well then...

-Fuck you guys too.

It was almost thirteen-hundred hours when I bailed on my first Cerulean date, and made straight for the City's northern wall. Following the week-old pile of Gym memorabilia litter stacked right up against north-eastern precinct's perimeter wall, I traced Misty's grapple points over Cerulean City's first outlying defence, and then I deftly crossed the Hades's Swath beyond it. Once I was concealed beneath the tropical Frontier treeline, I removed a Pokeball from my belt, and called forth my Hunter-Killer.

"Cortez, report." My scarred hound appeared in a flash of light, calmly awaiting my directive.

"Alright pooch. I need you to find me a redhead. Can you pick up her scent from this?" I asked, offering my dog the Gym Leader's appropriated towel.

One voracious whiffing of the towel later, and Cortez was pointing me in the direction of a relaxing Cerulean City Gym Leader.

"Thataboy. Take pole, ten meters ahead. Standard plan of engagement. Signal alerts, and fall back to me before we encroach upon the target." I ordered. Cortez quickly complied, doing his Pathfinder finest to coordinate the optimum secure route through the Frontier and up to Wrecker Cape's lagoons.

…

Cortez had done another beautiful job. This damn Growlithe was as good at finding safe passages through the Frontier as I was at killing the mon who lived there. My hound never let me down. We were still in the cover of the trees when Cortez fell back to me, and huddled his tattered ass low. I clambered after him on my elbows and knees, covering the remaining distance as stealthily as possible. When the humus rich soil gave way to the limestone sand, Cortez came to a halt, and I carefully shifted a sparse layer of foliage aside.

And there she was.

Her redhead bobbing up and down in the rolling surf.

Diving low, before coming back up with a juvenile Shellder clutched in her hands.

The Tomboy Mermaid.

Gym Leader Misty Willows.

The Tomboy Mermaid pulled a knife out from its hold between her teeth, and sank the blade right in between the Shellder's mantles, before Misty pried the bivalve's protective outer layer wide open. One quick thrust with her blade severed the Shellder's demibranch, preventing the mollusk mon from mounting any offensive countermeasures against Misty's sudden invasion. Following a thorough series of abductor-rending rakes with her knife, Misty cast the mutilated Shellder aside in disgust. Apparently, that mollusk didn't offer a bounty of pearls sufficient enough to sate the Tomboy Mermaid's appetite for glamour.

-Sucks to be a Shellder, I guess.

"Okay, Cortez. You wait in the bushes. Give me a howl if something's coming for us. I'm gonna go in and scope this broad out." I ordered.

Cortez just sneezed at me.

"Come on, pooch." I grinned at my hound.

"Learn something from your CO. You might be able to use what I show you, mutt." I slapped Cortez's scarred rump, and made to leave my cover.

I took my softened steps through the white sands slowly, still holding true to the original goal of discretion.

Misty didn't even know that I was standing at the shoreline until I spoke up.

"Finding anything worthwhile down there?"

Misty's knife slashed above the rolling wakes, tip aimed level with my person, and her feral eyes locked onto me.

I smiled pleasantly and raised my passive palms to shoulder level.

"I'll take that as a _No_." I grinned. The right answer. Misty snorted, and sheathed her knife in its thigh-mounted thong.

"...Since when do the Rangers send their patrols this deep into sector Alpha?" Misty asked, her voice surprisingly high pitched and nasally.

-Well, nobody's perfect…

"Patrols? I'm technically on leave." I smiled.

Chivalrous remarks regarding Misty's protection wasn't going to win any favors with this woman. Misty was clearly capable of defending herself, and she wasn't going to put up with any Ranger providing macho commentary.

"A fan then. What? Did you want an autograph that badly?" Misty sounded disappointed.

"Now, Gym Leader... A little humility please. I'm a fan of your bikini shots, but when it comes to you and the League? You're gonna have to earn that respect." I smirked. Misty suddenly realized what she was playing with.

The Cerulean City Gym leader should have figured it out pretty quickly.

Misty was practically the female version of me.

"Oh really?" Misty fluttered her eyelashes, voice falling into a dangerous octave.

"And just how do I _earn_ this Ranger's loyalty?" Misty simpered.

Holy fuck.

This woman was a charmer.

"By beating me in a Gym battle?" I suggested, echoing Misty's dangerously coy tone.

Misty started in surprise.

"A Ranger in a-? Oh!" Misty's face lit up with a sudden intuition.

"-Oh, you're that Ranger who competes in the League! I've heard about you…" Misty was giving me a scrutinizing eye.

"You hear anything good?" I asked, my charming smile stretching from ear to ear.

Misty answered that panty moistening smile with her own.

This was a stalemate.

We were both playing the same damn game, and matching each other bluff for bluff.

The only way to measure a victor in this contest now, was to discover who was going to initiate first.

"I certainly didn't hear anything good from Pewter…" Misty tried to shake my resolve with that cunningly disarming voice.

Not happening, Willows.

Bask in this smug look.

"Well, not to offend Brock Aissatou, but he really isn't my type." I chuckled.

-The cards were down...

"So what is your type, Ranger Zane?" Misty's voice was dipping into the seductive range.

-Not yet, Gym Leader. I haven't even shown you my hand yet.

"Let's see here…" I began, fixing a practiced eye on Misty.

"-Clever, confident, _gorgeous,_ capable, charming, _good-looking_ , and slightly cocky." A Ranger's slow, teasingly contemplative voice answered the Gym Leader's question.

Score.

Big time.

The Cerulean Harlot was turning red.

"...Sounds like you have some pretty high standards, Ranger. What girl could possibly satisfy such complex tastes?" Misty was struggling to keep from folding her hand.

-But I was ready to lay my Aces down high.

"...Oh, not many, not many at all. 'Course… I can think of at least one…" I met Misty's eyes with that soft grin.

Misty started to giggle.

-This round was mine.

"Ahem… Do you, um… Are you interested in helping a girl out of a _tight_ spot? I just can't seem to find a decent _clutch_ of pearls today. But maybe you could jump into the lagoon with me, and… _ease_ my dilemma?"

Good God.

-This girl was just as shamelessly promiscuous as I was.

I was already fighting the heat.

Misty knew how to play her game.

The Tomboy Mermaid had scored almost as high as I had.

"I'd love too. But you see, there's a problem… I _forgot_ to pack my swimming trunks back when I left Viridian." My every inflection was matching Misty's, one coy enunciated syllable at a time.

"Then swim without them, Ranger. _I don't mind..._ " Misty giggled.

-That's just what I had been waiting to hear.

My uniform came off in a teasing display of casual dignity. Misty's eyes widened on sight of my scarred up torso, but she didn't cover her mouth with a hand.

The people of Cerulean aren't exactly squeamish, and Misty was no exception. Though that surprised look was retained throughout the entire strip tease, it still changed dramatically when I dropped my shorts; and revealed the family's pride to the Cerulean City Gym Leader.

Make no mistake-

-That girl was just about to rush the shore for me.

I entered the chilly surf without so much as a goosebump rising to hint at bodily discomfort. It wasn't until I was up to my bare waist in froth that Misty revealed the Ace up _her_ sleeve.

 _-The foam behind the Tomboy Mermaid lifted in a massive swell; and breaking free from the ocean's surface, rose an all too familiar shape._

I locked the fuck up.

-I should have figured it out sooner.

Of course Misty wasn't all alone out here in the Frontier.

The Gym Leader had brought one hell of a deterrent with her out into Wrecker Cape's lagoons.

"...Look at you, you _beautiful fish_ …" I murmured in reverence.

Misty's eyebrows rose right up into her wet red bangs. The Cerulean City Gym Leader was not expecting that reaction from her potential playmate.

"...What's her name?" I asked softly, as a guttural rumble shook the clinging foam free from the colossal blue armored snake.

 _I could feel that sound reverberating in the water._

"How did you know that _Calypso_ was a she?" Misty asked, astounded.

"The barbels. They're white. That's the only way to tell a juvenile Gyarados's gender apart. Otherwise, you'd have to wait for their first molt, when they grow their sails. The males always have the more vivid sails." I murmured, approaching the fledgling Gyarados unafraid.

Calypso hissed at me.

"...Easy, Calypso. I don't play rough, unless it's requested." I continued closing the distance between me and the young Gyarados, well aware that fleeing a dragon-snake was potentially even more dangerous than holding your ground.

When a Gyarados smells weakness, it identifies that weakness as a food source.

-But push a Gyarados too far by aggressively advancing on it…

...And anything near an enraged Serpent is liable to wind up dead.

"Calypso. Play nice." Misty cooed as I came to stand below that Serpent's huge mouth.

"Look at you…" I murmured, running a hand down Calypso's jaw.

"What a beautiful girl…"

Calypso was watching me carefully. She didn't fully trust this strange Ranger, but Calypso's Trainer had given her an order. And a Gym Leader knows how to train even the most volatile of mon.

"...New addition to your Championship team?" I asked Misty, firmly patting the corner of Calypso's mouth.

"...Next season's Championship team, maybe…" Misty was looking at me with a whole new level of respect.

When a Gyarados makes its presence known, the intelligent thing for any witnesses to do; is to _not_ draw the Serpent's attention. Gyaradosia are notoriously unstable, and though their species is very rare…

The recorded disasters caused by feral Gyaradosia are the stuff of legends.

-Everybody knows not to mess with a Gyarados.

...Everybody, except of course; handsome, suicidal, dragon-snake obsessed, horny fucking Rangers.

"You sure know your way around a Gyarados, don't you?" Misty giggled, when I deftly ducked below a shifting barbel.

-You do not touch a Gyarados's nerve-rich facial whiskers. That will just piss them off.

"Are you kidding me? I've been pining for one of these gorgeous monsters since I was five. How old is Calypso?" I asked. Misty shook her head with a big ol' soft smile on her face.

The Gym Leader was impressed.

"Well, she came from Chimera, so… Calypso is almost a full year old now." Misty answered. I snorted.

"Enzo and his rapid growth therapy… Crazy fucking egghead." I gave another firm pat on the edge of Calypso's maw, and the giant dragon-snake began to sink below the briny surface.

"What an amazing beast…" I murmured when Calypso resumed her aquatic guard duty. Their wasn't a fricken mon in the lagoon that would get anywhere near Misty with a giant fucking Gyarados watching over her back.

Misty was even safer in these Frontier waters with her dragon-snake then she would be on a Route with a Ranger.

While I was shaking off the awe, my own respect for Misty was climbing the notches.

-What timing.

The Gym Leader was clearing her throat.

"So Ranger?" A redheaded Mermaid found her way into my arms, and drew me further out into deeper water.

"Is there a story behind these scars?" Misty asked, licking a finger tip, and swirling the moistened digit around in one of my shoulder's waxy dimples. A fond smile played on my lips.

"There's a couple of stories…" I answered softly, as the bottom half of Misty's bikini surfaced in the water next to me.

-You know my rule.

I may kiss…

...But I don't tell.

…

When Misty Willows finally returned to Cerulean City, she sparked a new set of controversial waves within her fanclub. Misty had always left Cerulean City alone, and the Gym Leader had always returned home alone; but today…

-Today we were breaking that unwritten tradition.

I received a minor taste of the celebrity life when word reached the paparazzi. Word stating that Misty Willows had entered Cerulean City's north gate accompanied by a handsome young Ranger. The two of us had barely made it as far as a city block before a drove of flashing cameras and handheld recorders descended upon the Gym Leader and I.

"Misty Willows, who is this-"

"Cerulean Channel four. Gym Leader, is this Ranger a-"

"Adam Tintz, I represent the Cerulean Bugle. Tell me, Ranger-"

"Just a couple of words-"

"-Can I have a moment of your time?"

"-If it's not too much to ask-"

Good God, I was just about to call up Damascus and order my snake to clear a path through the human swarm. The paparazzi was actually forming a ring around us to halt our advance. Frantic voices were overlapping one another, creating an alarming cacophony that triggered an inborn panic response within my person. And my growing anxiety sure wasn't helped by the incessant blinding camera flashes either. My sense of sight and sound were under assault, and my mobility was thoroughly repressed.

-This was intolerable.

 _How could anyone stand this?_

"I'm afraid that any official comments on my behalf will have to wait for a scheduled interview. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a dinner to attend." Misty was ever so polite when addressing this invasive mob. I don't know how she did it, remaining so cordial in the face of all those parasites; but now I could definitely understand why so many celebrities opted to wear the same fucking ugly aviator shades that Misty Willows was currently donning.

-When that many camera flashes are going off point blank in your face, _you need to wear fucking eye protection._

"Well that was fun." I grumbled when Misty's Gym staff denied the crowd of reporters and journalists access to the Cerulean Gym. Misty started laughing.

"It's a little bit annoying, but… It's also kind of flattering." The Gym Leader chuckled.

"Yeah… I don't know if it's my scene." I grunted, blinking the white and blue blurs out of my sight. Still laughing, Misty removed her aviators, and put them over my eyes.

"There. Now you won't be caught off guard on our walk to dinner…" Misty was still playing the game, and after our evening in the lagoon…

-I was more than happy to play along with her.

 _More than happy._

"Shit. I think that you can make these goofy things look even better than I can." I grinned. Misty surprised me with a camera flash from her holocaster.

"I don't know… Those aviators compliment the beret pretty well." Misty teased, rotating the holocaster's display my way.

"Naw, that look is only being pulled off by the handsome mug with the cheesy grin. Damn, that guy looks sexy." I chuckled, getting another eruption of giggles out of Misty.

"So… Are you going to change before dinner, or are you going to wear the _uniform_?" Misty asked. From anyone else, that would have sounded like a request for me to swap suits. But Misty's teasing smile at the word _uniform_ implied her preference.

"Just let me make sure that I shook all the sand out at the lagoon. I don't want to be a disgrace to the Cerulean City Gym Leader _or_ the _uniform_." I smirked. Misty's smile widened.

"Give me about a half an hour. Make yourself cozy." Misty put a lingering hand on my shoulder as she slowly walked off to her private quarters in the Cerulean Gym. I did as my second date of the day requested, and after a good thorough shaking of my Ranger onesies, I sat down in the Gym lounge to patiently await my hostess. It wasn't too boring. Like in every Gym, there was a video stream of the residential Gym Leader's most inspiring League battles. So I was privileged to play witness to a recording of Misty creaming Lorelai in the Indigo League's prior seasonal finals.

-Poor Lorelai. The aspiring Sevii novelist just couldn't get a break with all these Kantonese Gym Leaders stomping up and down her spine.

After I was midway through Misty and Lorelai's League match, the aforementioned Gym Leader reappeared, wearing a banana yellow islander long dress with faint red traces of hibiscus blooms ringing the hem. An intricately pleated corset and bow frilled the lower back of the dress; bestowing Misty with a far more cinched figure than her athletic body would normally portray. Her red hair was pulled back into chignon, and decked out with a pair of massive red wooden kanzashis. Misty's feet were decisively bare of conventional shod, instead the Gym Leader had favored an elegant yellow footwrap that climbed from the soles of her feet and wrapped tightly around her shapely calves; with a freshly cut red lily interwoven in either ankle knot.

To say the least, Misty looked gorgeous.

Complementing her becoming attire, a fresh layer of cosmetics and a light dash of perfume had turned the Tomboy Mermaid into a fully fledged tropical beauty.

"That, right there… _That_ is the definition… _of ravishing._ " I was not so overcome by Misty's appearance that I couldn't find something charming to say. The beaming Gym Leader snapped open a red stained hinoki ogi with a flick of her wrist, and giggled behind the cypress fan.

"You almost make me feel underdressed. It's a good thing that I remembered to wear my SO bandanna today." My cheesy grin wasn't going to get old anytime soon. A glowing eyed Misty donned and adjusted a fresh pair of aviators, before stretching a bare arm to me. Taking that sinewing arm in a cordial hold, The Cerulean City Gym Leader and the soon to be infamous Fucking Bastard walked out into the evening mob, and headed blissfully towards Misty's favorite Johotonene restaurant.

…

"Do you always place your orders of Omakase with the greeter?" Misty laughed when we sat down at her private balcony table.

"Yep. I like to live dangerously." I answered, chuckling right along with the Gym Leader.

"Oh, Misty... what are you getting into?" Misty giggled to herself, leaning her right temple against a fist.

"Aw, come on now. You're gonna make me blush." I teased. Misty just buried her face into the tablecloth, her shoulders shaking with the breathless laughter. I was still smiling when Misty lifted her grinning head up off the table.

"Okay… Okay… Slow it down. I can hold my breath for as long as is humanly possible, but I still need to breathe…" Misty fought back the chuckles, her eyes watering. I just gave Misty a smarmy look, which made beating the giggles all the more difficult for her.

"Okay… Zane- Is it alright if I call you Zane? Saying Ranger Zane over and over again just sounds so formal…" Misty finally found enough breath with which to speak.

"Shit. You can call me whatever you like, just so long as you're still smiling when you say it." My cheesy grin is a lethal weapon under the right circumstances, and woe on Misty…

...Now was proving to be one of those perfect storms.

"-Knock it off, Zane!" Misty smacked me with her fan, struggling against another fit of giggles.

I just kept on smiling at her.

This was a pretty damn good time.

I was feeding off Misty's nasally laughter as much as she was intoxicating herself on my dopey charm.

"Alright. I'll try again. _Zane_." Misty straightened herself out as much as she could, but one look at my goofy grin had her wrestling with the mirth again.

"Fine! I'll just ask! Zane, would you tell me about your Gym match with Brock?" Misty took several deep breaths, and fixed me with a level eye.

"I could." I stated, still grinning. Misty began to knead her brow.

"...Oh God… Would you _please_ tell me about your Gym match with Brock?" Misty almost sounded frustrated, but she wasn't fooling me.

We both knew that this was all just foreplay.

"Hmm… Maybe?" I answered innocently.

Misty threw her fan at me.

"Just tell me, you cocktease of a Ranger!" Misty chortled.

"-Well… There isn't much to say." I replied. Misty made a face.

"You're kidding me! You walked into the Pit, beat Brock in a Novice match by breaking the rules, somehow managed to convince him to grant you the Boulder Badge, and then you _walked out of the Pit with an Intermediate-Two License?_ " Misty was gaping at me.

"That was the entire event in a nutshell, yep." I kept right on grinning.

"Oh, for fuck's sake… You aren't going to tell me, are you?" Misty leaned her cheek on a palm.

"That would be revealing classified Ranger intel." I officially coughed into a fist.

"You little bitch… You aren't going to hand me any advantages, are you?" Misty grumbled, though that smile was still animating her face.

"Nope. You'll get to find out how I operate in a Gym ring soon enough, Willows." I smirked. Misty sighed.

"Okay… Well, if you refuse to tell me about your match with Brock… Maybe you could tell me about the match that followed yours?" Misty tried.

I froze stiff.

The day's first expression of discomfort crossed my face.

 _-I just couldn't get away from him…_

"You mean, TH's battle with Brock?" I muttered. Misty swallowed.

"Due to it being a Private match, Brock isn't legally allowed to discuss it. I've put in a request to the League for any footage recorded from last year's Kalosian League Finals, but… It seems that the Kalosian government destroyed all public documents pertaining to the Eidolon King." Misty explained. That revelation struck me dumb with a sudden epiphany.

"...Political Decimation. King Arturia must be trying to destroy TH's identity in Kalos by erasing his history… Of all the shallow bureaucratic maneuvers..." I muttered under my breath.

"Say what?" A distraught Misty Willows asked me.

"Nothing… Just musing on what you told me…" I grunted. Misty looked at me with concern. I'd been acting invincible and witty all day, and now I was showing Misty the other end of Zane Bastard's personality spectrum. Worried. Brooding. Introverted.

- _Haunted._

"...What would you like to know?" I reluctantly asked Misty at last. Misty spread her arms apart with a bewildered expression; as if the answer should be obvious.

"How does TH fight? What strategies does he employ? How does TH himself react to the events of the battle? All of it, any of it, even the most insignificant detail!" Misty was looking worried too.

"...TH posed a challenge to you, didn't he?" I asked. Misty swallowed hard.

"...Not yet. But I know that it's coming. I need to learn everything that I can-"

"-Be prepared to lose. And don't push your mon too hard. TH will just kill them before you have a chance to intervene. Did you hear about Quartz and Lithe? What TH did to them?" I asked. Misty shuddered.

"It couldn't have happened to a more ideal victim. Brock loves his mon like family. The only thing that has been keeping Brock away from a Quad-Flame ranking is his inability to sacrifice his mon…" Misty murmured. I could detect a trace of pity in her voice.

"Yeah, well TH exploited that. After TH burned Lithe away into the Distortion, Brock just called it quits. He was weeping up a Goddamn flood for his dead trilobite. And TH just smiled at Brock. As if he found the whole sordid affair _funny…_ " I growled the last bit.

"So TH knows how to get inside his opponent's head?" Misty asked. My breath left my lungs in a rattling laughter.

" _You have no idea how good he is at it."_ I whispered. Misty gave me a moment to shake off the dread, before asking her next question.

"-What about his strategies? Did you notice TH deploying any particularly ingenious or unorthodox designs?" Misty asked.

"...TH goaded Brock into making the first move. A reckless move. One of TH's Ghosts, _Pariah,_ was waiting to intercept Quartz's attack with a cursed shield. As soon as that Rhyperior made contact with Pariah… The Ghost started killing her." I answered grimly.

"Is that how Quartz died? A curse?" Misty asked, the Cerulean City Gym Leader was hanging onto my every word.

"No…" I shuddered again.

" _...Pariah fucking cut that Rhyperior in half with a single sword stroke."_ I hissed. Misty fell back into her seat. The bug-eyed and pale expression said it all.

"...Pariah killed her with one attack? A _Rhyperior?_ _A Championship Rhyperior?!_ " Misty couldn't believe what I had just told her. I still struggled to believe it, and I had witnessed it.

"One stroke. Nobody saw it. Quartz was still alive when Brock called her back into her Pokeball, but… I imagine that Brock dug a grave for Quartz before he let her out for the last time…" I whispered.

"...Poor Brock…" Misty sounded like she was gonna start grieving for her rival in the League.

"TH only used two of his Ghosts in that match. Pariah actually killed pretty quickly in comparison to Ghost number two; _Typhon…_ " I spat that foul name out. Misty covered her mouth.

"-I've heard about that Ghost before. One of the Kalosian legends. Typhon, the Unyielding. Typhon, the Maelstrom. They say that he's never fallen in battle, and that no one has been able to Channel Typhon for centuries…" Misty murmured.

"Yeah, well your information is dated. Typhon yields to TH. And after seeing the shit that Typhon pulled… I could almost believe in the legends of his invincibility." I was interrupted by an itamae, who came to our table to roll and cut an appetizer of Alomomola Sushi, before pouring Misty and I a round of sake.

"So…" Misty began after the itamae had left us. I drained the first round of sake, and longed for another to appear.

"...How did Typhon fight?" Misty asked. I snorted.

"Like a Goddamn devil. That Jellicent burned everything that hit the field with Ghostfire, and he polarized his Distortion seep in order to fill the Pit with miasma. Total field control. Typhon wasn't going to let Brock claim the home-field advantage. I didn't see much of Brock's Cradily duking it out with Typhon, mostly because I was too busy trying to avoid the fucking miasma… But Brock's fossilized plant didn't stand a chance. Typhon shrugged off everything that Brock's Cradily threw at him, while that freaky Ghost just focused on burning the fossil down. Brock wisened up, and benched his Cradily before TH could kill her. But then Lithe came out…" I paused, and forced myself to eat a piece of Sushi. The powerful and pleasant flavors of a Cerulean dragon roll did wonders for chasing away the terror.

"Lithe was fucking beautiful. I honestly thought that Brock's Kabutops could stand up to Typhon. Typhon couldn't touch Lithe with the Ghostfire, so that fast motherfucking Kabutops had an advantage. Initially." I ate another wad of raw fish, and tried to chase Typhon's memory out of my mind.

"Lithe ripped Typhon to shreds. Any other mon would have died from that reaming. Any other mon would have fallen to the ground in pieces. But it was all a ploy. TH was just trying to lure Lithe and Brock into a false sense of security. The very moment Lithe committed himself to the finishing cut, Typhon intercepted that Kabutops with his Ghostfire. Then Typhon reversed time itself using a halo rift, and undid all the damage that Lithe had been able to inflict on him." I paused in the telling, as three more itamaes arrived to divvy up the second course on the Omakase menu. Marinated Qwilfish Fugu fillets, served with warmed sake. The Qwilfishs' spined tails were added to the drinks, slowly bleeding a minor neurotoxin into the sake. I knew better than to down this round quickly. The buzz you get from Fugu sake is best after the poison and liquor have had time to steep together.

"After that freaky Ghost crippled Brock's trump card, TH gave Typhon clearance to sink the Pit into a fucking Distortion sub-cell. Everybody in attendance got a taste of the darkness. And I do not want go back into that hell, even if it's one of the outer shells." I sampled my Fugu, and tried to ease my rattled nerves. Misty had barely touched her meal. I could understand why.

Not even Agatha Poe's infamous Triplets could manage the unnatural feats that TH's Ghosts pulled off so effortlessly.

"Lithe was pulled directly into the Distortion sub-cell's penumbra. Then Typhon did something weird, and called up this violet aurora. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but this aurora seemed to intensify and hasten the burning of Typhon's Ghostfire. Lithe disintegrated in a matter of seconds. Well, seconds as far as the human awareness can measure outside of the Distortion. I couldn't figure out if I was stuck in that Distortion sub-cell for an eternity, or if I had never actually been in one. That place will fuck with your head..." I was clutching both temples when I finished the telling. It was a long time before Misty asked her next question. Long enough for the third course to arrive.

-Just fucking awesome.

Octillery Sannakji, and the final preparations were carried out right at our table. I watched as those still living infant cephalopods were relieved of their appendages, and then the writhing limbs were seasoned with soy and sesame; before a round of soju filled a fresh set of ochokos.

"Just what I wanted to eat… Wiggling tentacles…" I put on my best smile for my date, and lifted a chopstick load of thrashing limbs into my mouth. You had to be careful when eating Sannakji. Those suction cups still functioned, and as well as sticking to the inside of your mouth; Sannakji could also grip your throat mid-swallow and choke you.

The things that some people call gourmet dining…

- _Why did I order Omakase?_

"And TH… Did he react at all?" Misty sounded worried. I struggled to speak past the Sannakji lodged in my throat, choosing to down a Fugu sake chaser before answering the Cerulean City Gym Leader.

"...He never stopped smirking for a second. He never even spoke a word. He barely moved at all. Nothing phased him. TH just radiated this… aura of manipulation. Like he knew how it was all going to end, and he set the whole damn scene up beforehand." I sighed, and took another shot at the Sannakji.

"...So do you think that TH is unbeatable?" Misty asked me in a peculiar tone. I forced down the dismembered Octillery, and met her eyes in a cold gaze.

"Nothing is unbeatable. But TH is a League Champion. And you can tell that he earned his Penta-Flame rank, just by watching him fight." I answered. Misty blew out her lips in a sputtering gale.

"Right, well… As you can imagine… This season, I've opted to train some Ghost-Killers for the Finals. Agatha's Triplets won't fare particularly well against a Hoennese Sharpedo and a Kalosian Greninja. I made a few deals with the shipping lanes to acquire some whoppers for Enzo Davinci. I'm getting the first brood of Chimera Froakies and Carvanhas at a discount price because I nabbed Enzo a pair of species that he didn't already have in his Ranch. The Carvanhas were easy enough to purchase, but the Froakies? I had to go through some contacts in the Kalosian Marche Noir in order to secure those rare puppies." Misty seemed pretty smug about her new Wraith-Slayers, but I wasn't so sure that they'd be as useful against TH as they would be against Agatha.

"You will be _getting?_ You mean to tell me that you don't have your aquatic Dark-Types yet?" I asked. Misty slumped slightly.

"No, not yet. But I'm training a dozen of each. You see, unlike Brock Aissatou… _Misty Willows doesn't cry over spilt milk._ " Misty put on her Championship face. I snorted.

"Misty Willows doesn't eat Sannakji either, does she?" I challenged Misty to a contest of resolve. Misty locked eyes with me, and lifted her chopsticks decisively. Pinching a pair of Octillery limbs between the ivory boughs, Misty lifted course number three to her lips.

She hesitated when one of the tentacles flailed against her chin.

Misty was turning green.

I buried my chopsticks into the platter, and began to casually pop writhing tentacles into my mouth, one at a time.

Misty's dining hand started to tremble.

One big ol' Ranger grin was gleaming across the table at Misty, with a wiggling tentacle held prisoner between the incisors.

Misty slammed her eyes shut, and then jammed her chopsticks directly into her throat, before attempting to swallow the Sannakji whole.

Bad move.

You needed to chew those suction cups into a rubbery paste before you even tried to swallow them.

Misty began choking within seconds.

I honestly thought that I was going to have to administer a heimlich maneuver on the Cerulean City Gym Leader.

-Which almost sounded like fun.

But I guess that if you rinse your throat with enough sake…

...You can wash the sticky limbs clear of your esophagus.

"That was so gross!" Misty gagged. I was still laughing when she waved a waiter over, and snatched a bottle of premium cask aged sake from his serving platter.

Guzzling the commandeered alcohol straight from the bottle, a minor fountain of sake erupted from Misty's nose and mouth when the potent spirits burned my date for her haste.

"- _Classy_." I smirked. Misty raised a middle digit to me, and resumed chugging the bottle of sake.

Oh boy…

...Misty was going to be a sloppy handful tonight.

And an hour later, in Misty's private abode…

...My messy prediction proved well founded.

That girl's sex drive wasn't inhibited in the least.

 _-Even if the rest of her was..._

…

"Ohgawd…"

I woke from another dreadful memory, tears pooling in either eye. I wasn't in Viridian Prime Outpost's sickbay. It wasn't the night after Echo's funeral.

Cerulean.

I was in Cerulean City.

It was morning.

I wasn't crying my heart out to Darwin.

I wasn't begging to die.

I was in Cerulean City. Echo's funeral had concluded months ago.

 _-But the memory was so alive…_

"Mmmph…"

Something red groaned from my chest.

-Oh yeah…

I was in Cerulean City. In a bed of pleasures. Previously sleeping beside a celebrity Trainer.

Misty Willows was a bit reluctant about waking up quite this early in the morning, especially after last night.

-Good.

It gave me the time I required to collect myself in privacy.

I gazed out at the sea through Misty's penthouse suite skyview. The sun was still far from the rising, but the moon shone through the sparsely clouded sky, lighting the inky ocean surface with a pale rolling reflection. A slight hint of blue tinged the horizon, drawing a clearly defined line betwixt the water and the sky.

And between the ocean and below the penthouse windows; the first lights of activity were beginning to flicker into existence, as sleepy Cerulean woke to greet the rising day.

It was breathtaking.

Old marble Cerulean looked beautiful from this roost in the sky.

It was the perfect distraction.

The perfect contrast.

I needed something evocative to help me bury the memories again.

I had just dried my eyes and steadied my breathing when an incoming hail on my Tact. Pad brought the Tomboy Mermaid that much closer to awareness.

I fished the Tact. Pad out of my discarded coat's breast pocket. Misty just about threw a half-sleeping tantrum over the sudden commotion, but she settled down appropriately when I pulled her naked form against mine. It was only after the Cerulean City Gym Leader had quieted down that I dared to check the caller ID.

 _-RCBHT07-U04_

It was Captain Lewis, waking both me and my date with the Ranger's morning horn.

"Good Morning Captain Lewis." I said it with all the novelty of a schoolboy.

"Warrant Officer Bastard. What have you to report?"

Fuck. Captain Lewis wouldn't even wish me a cordial good morning. And here I thought that I was bad at being human…

"Well I _was_ operating incognito behind enemy lines, but you just shot that to shit." I grinned down at the redhaired beauty resting her curious head on my shoulder. Misty was wide awake, and eagerly eavesdropping on this official exchange.

"What do you mean covert? I thought that you were studying Misty Willow's League strategies. Why would that manner of reconnaissance require a subtle approach?" Captain Lewis's icy voice hinted at her suspicion.

"I studied every Gym Leader's League history in extensive detail before I even left Viridian Prime Outpost for Pewter. I know how a certain Misty Willows thinks in a League match, I know her entire Intermediate-Two roster, and I reviewed every recorded Intermediate-Two challenge that Misty answered since she first became a Gym Leader. I did my homework, Captain. Now I need to do my fieldwork." I was still grinning at Misty when I said that.

I should have known better than to flatter her.

-Misty's hands started getting rather playful beneath the sheets.

"So you're training your team for an aquatic Gym challenge then?" Captain Lewis asked, her voice already becoming something testy.

"...Ahem. Some-something like that?"

Misty's head had disappeared below the covers, and a sudden redheaded swell at my midriff meant that Misty's hands were getting tired.

"What's going on, Zane?" The cool voice of Captain Lewis asked.

I had to bite my tongue.

 _-All because Misty knew how to use her tongue…_

"Just… Just an in depth-"

I cut myself off, gritting my teeth against a rising moan.

"Where are you currently located?" Captain Lewis asked.

"I didn't get the street number-"

Misty was taking her position above me now, finally deciding to pleasure herself on her plaything.

"Don't tell me-" Captain Lewis groaned.

-She was interrupted by Misty's moaning.

 _This redheaded broad liked to play dirty._

"Is that-?" Captain Lewis began

"-Just the television." I hastily replied.

"Oh... Zane…"

Goddamnit.

I could hear that moan echoing on Captain Lewis's end.

One look at my wickedly smiling date told me the whole story.

Misty was getting her vengeance for last night's Sannakji fiasco.

"Report to HQ at eight-hundred hours, Warrant Officer. That should allocate you a sufficient amount of time to complete your _fieldwork_. And then you and I are going to discuss current affairs plaguing the Cerulean district's Ranger Corps. That is all." Captain Lewis spat.

 _-Click._

"Who was that bitch?" Misty paused the action for a casual conversation.

"My Commanding Officer." I grumbled. Misty looked down at me curiously.

"Eight-O'-clock, huh? That gives us four hours…" Misty began. I smirked from below her.

"So does this mean that you're going to finish what you started?" I asked. Misty was answering my smirk with her own. Then she lifted her loins from my hips, and placed the sweetest fruit upon my lips.

"Only if you kiss it…" Misty teased as she put a hand behind my head.

…

"Ranger Zane Bastard, reporting as ordered." I stood at attention within the Team Seven's Barracks.

As far as my lone eye could see, only one Blackhat was in attendance.

Captain Lewis, sharpening a knife by her bunk.

"At ease, Bastard." Captain Lewis set aside her knife, and fixed both cold eyes on me.

There was a drawn out pause...

Then-

"Fieldwork." Captain Lewis stated in that iron tone.

"I got results." I replied.

"Really? Beyond getting your dick wet in some back alley whore?" Captain Lewis asked.

-Come on, Captain Lewis…

...You should know that I can do better than _that_.

"You did hear the other _happy_ voice on my end of your morning call, right? That voice belonged to a certain Misty Willows." I tried not to smile when I said it.

" _Nice!"_ Lieutenant Roscoe suddenly appeared from behind one of the bunks, wearing the shit eating grin that should have been on my face.

A tittering of laughter from every oblique corner told me that the majority of Blackhat Team Seven was in subtle attendance. They started creeping out from the shadows, everyone of them donning the same evil grin.

...Fucking Vets, man.

-They really like fucking with one another.

Captain Lewis worked her mouth. Apparently, she didn't quite concur with Lieutenant Roscoe's analysis.

"What exactly did you learn, Ranger? Anything of relevance for your Gym battle?" Captain Lewis asked.

Every Blackhats' smile faded. Stern eyes fell on me.

-Fortunately, _I did learn something relevant from my date with Misty Willows._

"My opponent is confident on the surface, but conceals her doubt beneath that. Misty Willows is impulsive, a risk taker, and prone to acting on bad judgement based off her predictable moodswings. She'll attempt to secure total field control before making any overt moves against her opposition, she'll utilize both flattery and the authority of her social station to get underneath her adversary's skin; and if it means winning? Misty Willows will play just as dirty as a Ranger." I reported to Blackhat Team Seven.

Lieutenant Roscoe quirked an eyebrow.

"Shit, kid. I do not want you as my midnight wingman." The Blackhat Lieutenant announced. A smattering of chuckles followed Lieutenant Roscoe's jab. Captain Lewis was measuring me intently.

"...And what did Misty Willows learn from you, Bastard?"

 _Oh…_

 _-Fuck._

"...That I'm indestructible, cocky as shit, charming as all hell, _really good in bed,_ that I hate Ghosts-"

"-How did Misty Willows learn about your run in with TH?" Captain Lewis cut me off with her dire tone. I cleared my throat.

"...Last night's dinner revealed what kind of game Willows plays. Frankly, I think that Misty would have just fucked me at the lagoon and then let me find my own way back to Cerulean City. But I had information. Information that a Gym Leader wants so badly that she'd even invite a playboy out to dinner just to learn it." I answered. Lieutenant Roscoe looked over at Captain Lewis with a peculiar expression on his face. The rest of Blackhat Team Seven were shifting eyes with one another.

But Captain Lewis's cold eyes were locking gaze with only one Ranger in the Barracks.

-Chief Warrant Officer Zane Bastard.

"So Misty Willows only pumped you for information on TH?" Captain Lewis asked. I snorted.

"Captain Lewis, Misty thinks that I'm just a Ranger scamming my way through the League. She doesn't identify me as a threat. To the Cerulean City Gym Leader, Zane Bastard is just the flavor of the week. But that grey-eyed freak? He's up to something in Kanto, and everybody wants to know what it is." I reported.

Hint:

 _-I wanna know too._

"...And just what did you tell Misty Willows about TH?" Captain Lewis asked.

And that shrewd icy tone told everything that I wanted to know.

 _-Captain Lewis is in on it…_

 _...Is there no one that I can trust?_

"Only what I know. I related to Misty all the strategies and techniques that TH utilized in his Pewter City Gym Battle. Basically, I just told Willows that she'd best prepare for a creaming. If Misty can't get above a Mono-Flame rank in her three years of competing within the Indigo League Finals, then she hasn't got a prayer against Kalos's Reigning Champion." I replied.

I liked to keep what I knew about TH to myself. I didn't need an agency like ACE figuring out that I knew more than they wanted me to.

"So Willows doesn't know anything that might jeopardize Operation: Wounded Hearts?" Captain Lewis requested further clarity.

"If you don't believe me, then you can ask Alexandria. The eavesdropping shit probably recorded every word. I wouldn't be surprised at all if some of ACE's surveillance teams had to clean their shorts after listening to the show that Misty and I gave them last night." I smiled when I said it.

"-I learned my lesson the first time, Captain Lewis. I'm never letting my mouth run free again." I managed to repress a shudder when I recalled my little security breach incident in Pewter.

-I did not want to get gassed by ACE.

"Very good, Ranger. Now that you've completed the first prerogative on your mission requisition, let's discuss the second."

Every Blackhat found their feet and angled their salutes to the man standing right behind me. I recognised that voice instantly.

I about-faced and placed my fingers against my brow as Lt. Col Rionaldo raised his salute to answer ours.

"At ease, Rangers. Blackhats, saddle up. We've got a standby Black handle in the Vermilion District. Get your Wyrms prepped for a seek and destroy. The Arbok situation in the Prague is getting out of hand. We're hunting down their spring burrows and torching them before they can start laying their eggs. Stand to, Team Seven. We are boots in the sky in five."

Every Blackhat fell into formation in a flash, knives were stripped from the armory walls, and prepacked field kits were shouldered in seconds. The entire outfit turned to their commanding officer with a roar.

"AD HONOREM!"

I was caught in the moment. I almost found myself shouting with them.

Team Seven charged out of the Barracks, leaving both a Lt. Col Rionaldo and a Chief Warrant Officer Bastard alone in the newly silent room.

"I don't have much time, Ranger, so let me make this quick. Cerulean Prime Outpost is requesting aid in sector Alpha. It's Cerulean's Walkout season, and the local Vets are suffering personnel shortages across all divisions. Captain Lewis was happy to volunteer the support of a Viridian Sapper unit to assist Cerulean Prime with clearing out some Beedrill hives. You are to report to Cerulean Prime Outpost immediately, and swap your League loadout for the appropriate ordnance-"

-I was already beaming.

 _It had been way too long since the Fucking Bastard had blown something up._

"-I've also alerted Cerulean Prime Outpost to monitor the ordnance returns very carefully. I know your reputation, Bastard. Every ounce of unused C4 is to be returned to the Quartermaster upon completion of your mission. Every ounce. You are not to pocket the leftovers."

...Son of a bitch…

"Yes sir!" My back straightened against the slump that threaten to crush my heart.

I may have disobeyed such specific orders in the past, but pissing off a Blackhat CO was not a risk that I could comfortably entertain. That said, my ears were starting to ring, and my spine was already tingling from the anticipated booms.

-Maybe I wouldn't sneak an ounce of fun out of Cerulean's ordnance depot, but I'd make the most of what I _specifically_ could.

"Good. I've radioed ahead to ACE. They'll give Alexandria clearance to disengage the Trainer's Eyes. Your trip north should be quick and uneventful, Ranger. Dismissed." Lt. Col Rionaldo and I parted ways, and the Blackhat CO hoofed it after his regiment, as I trucked it for the HQ's southern exit.

I had barely made it to Cerulean City's northern gate when sixteen Gyaradosia rose from the western precinct in a staggered finger-four squadron formation. From that distance, I couldn't visually identify which Blackhat was fulfilling which role, but I knew Team Seven's Flight Leader roster by heart.

Lt. Col Rionaldo was flying Squadron Leader on Red Flight as Red-One, Captain Lewis was heading Blue Flight as Blue-Leader, Captain York was heading Yellow Flight as Yellow-Leader, and Major Pallin was heading Green Flight as Green-Leader.

The other Blackhats generally swapped roles between Element Leader and the Wingman roles, depending on what Flight they were deployed in, but certain designated Flights always had their staples.

On Blue Flight, Flight Wingman always fell to Lieutenant Roscoe, just as Element Leader on Red Flight always fell to Chief Warrant Officer Davis.

Just like in every disciplined outfit, certain unit pairings in Blackhat Team Seven had a more effective synergy than they did with any others.

...I was starting to get the impression that there might have been something going on between Lieutenant Roscoe and Captain Lewis, but the thought of cold old Captain Lewis in a romantic relationship with another human being was nothing short of laughable.

-Especially with the young Lieutenant Roscoe, who seemed only mildly more tame than me.

Chuckling my ass off, I sent a salute towards the Gyaradosia; as I watched that blue cloud of armored and ribbed-sailed dragon-snakes fly out over the southern Route that connected Cerulean City with the Gouge, before I turned in the opposite direction and made my cheery way up north towards Wrecker Cape.

...Sexy redheads, fresh seafood, beautiful architecture, ordnance dispensing Blackhats, and Kanto's highest concentration of Gyaradosia per cubic kilometer...

Yep.

 _-I was really beginning to fall in love with Cerulean._

...And then I had to go and fuck it all up.

…

The welcome that I received at Cerulean Prime Outpost was a little unnerving.

...Okay…

...I'll be honest.

-It was downright disturbing.

The Mount Moon Rangers had not been yanking my chain in the least. The entire Ranger Corps knew who the Fucking Bastard was. There was a Goddamn welcoming formation just waiting to salute my ass into Cerulean Prime Outpost's compound.

-I wasn't ready for that.

I was accustomed to just being another soldier in the uniform.

Not a fucking VIP.

After that awkward moment had been endured, I shook hands with Colonel Merrien, the regiment commander of Cerulean Prime Outpost, and then I received a formal reception and recognition within full view of her regiment; before I was comfortably put in my proper place among the infantry units with a Sapper designated loadout. My Squad's CO, Lieutenant Crosby, put me in the spotlight as his number two, before he let the Fucking Bastard take honorary command of his outfit.

Commanding Walkouts for me was a breeze. I could impose my superiority over Walkouts with an evil smile, but Vets?

-I was the youngest soldier in that entire six man squad, and though I had a higher or equivalent rank to more than half of the outfit…

Every one of these Greenbacks was a Veteran, with enough battlefield experience on me to make the Fucking Bastard look like a Walkout himself.

I hadn't even left the L-Straight into Sector Alpha yet, and I was already feeling the pressure.

-But I sure as hell wasn't showing it.

One thing I did appreciate about the squad I had been stationed with, was that they were all respectfully silent. There was no idle banter, or questions pertaining to my decorations, as there had been in Lune.

We were a squad of Veteran Rangers, hellbent on wiping out some Beedrill.

Relating war stories came secondary to the mission's primary objective.

-Murder the bloody mon, and then destroy their fucking homes.

 _And I was having a good time with my return to the front lines._

If the Vets were impressed by Cortez's nose, then they were amazed at Damascus's insane size and power. The first two Beedrill hives were crushed by my Rock-Snake, while Cortez, Vauban, myself; and the Vets with their own G.I. mon wiped out the swarm.

After we had finished slaughtering the Beedrill swarms, we Tang'd both ruined hives and lit up the remains.

Everything was going by the book.

-Right up until a Beedrill scout caught wind of us, before the fugly bug whooped Cortez in a race to hive three, and alerted the entire swarm to the Ranger's presence in their territory.

We had to hole up beneath our Bastion Class Onix, while we worked out a strategy for clearing out the attacking swarm. Cerulean's wetlands were too damp for Viridian's standard Beedrill swarm counter-tactic of igniting a swathe of the woods, and sitting back to watch as the light-obsessed bugs killed themselves by flying into the fire. The Rangers of Cerulean had to deviate from the easy stratagem, and improvise with what we had on hand.

Fortunately for the shitty circumstances, the Fucking Bastard had come to Cerulean packing some serious heat.

Cortez had given us plenty of forewarning to the approaching swarm, which allowed me to deploy Damascus in his most valuable suit. Before the swarm of Beedrill could even get within range to needle-rape us, a protective tunnel had been dug and quickly covered by my bigass Bastion Class.

If it wasn't for Cortez's nose and Damascus's tunneling skills, we might have lost a unit or two to the Beedrills' initial attack. But we made it through that shitfest without accruing a single Ranger casualty. We paired a G.I. Vileplume with my Vauban for a coordinated subterranean deployed pollen emission, and then our two noxious mon paralyzed the Beedrill swarm with an anesthetic dispersal that we ventilated from surface-breaching shafts dug from below ground. Following the incapacitated swarm's elimination, I laid waste to the third hive with my general issued explosives, and then the Vets and I took our sweet time clearing out the chorus of mon that responded to the boom.

After the resolution of that little fiasco, the Vets lightened up considerably. They started singing clandestine marching tunes on our way to the final hive, putting my name in place of the melodies' hailed badasses; who were crushing Swanna heads under heels and strangling Sevipers with bare hands. To the Cerulean Vets under my command, the Fucking Bastard was living up to his legend.

It should've been flattering.

...But for me…

-I just wanted to be treated like a soldier.

...Not some kind of _Hero_...

…

"What's the status of those charges, Bastard?" Lieutenant Crosby asked me.

"Leads are hot, lines are set, and charges are live. Give me a few more seconds to mold this cone, and we'll be good to go. A shaped charge dispersing the boom into the soil should limit the noise. Hopefully, we'll draw less attention setting this one off than hive three's detonation did. I smell like a fucking butcher shop after vaporizing all those Bidoofs." I reported. Lieutenant Crosby snorted.

"Yeah, I like that idea. I can still taste the red mist. Don't you think that your secondary clear-all was packed for overkill?" Lieutenant Crosby licked the inside of his mouth with an unpleasant expression on his face. His normally olive green uniform was speckled with blood from the previous hive's clear-all.

"...When I lay the charges… I like to ensure… That nothing's gonna be standing… after… I blow the scene…" I answered cautiously, as I gingerly fastened the final loop of Det. cord around a shaped wet-ANFO package.

"There. The hive is rigged, the clear-all is in place, and the triggers are primed. Let's blow this bitch into Beedrill hell, and put our bets down on who answers the boom first. Twenty Sandz says that the Mankeys beat the Bidoofs to the clear-all this time." I grinned, finishing up the final checks. I heard the Lieutenant strip a crisp twenty-Sandz bill out of his wallet.

"I'll meet that bet, but I'll also put down an extra five on the Oddish beating the Shroomish." Lieutenant Crosby chuckled.

"Well I'm ten Sandz in the hole already, but fuck it. You're on." I peeled out my own money, and tossed it into the pool, before both the Lieutenant and I retreated a hundred-and-fifty meters south of ground zero to regroup with the awaiting G.I. mon and the Ranger Vets.

"Damascus, would you _kindly_ dig us a bunker? If you make it deep enough, then I'll put on some Bach for you..." I politely _requested_ of my ornery Rock-Snake, who had yet to kick my ass today.

A minor _rumble_ was all that Damascus responded with, before he grudgingly dug the Rangers and I a deep trench for cover.

"Thanks, Gramps..." I slapped Damascus's heavy lower jaw when he resurfaced.

" _-For not knocking me out…"_ I added in a spitting undertone.

 _RUMBLE._

If I didn't know any better, I'd say that last rumble sounded pretty smug.

"Here's your fucking music, you disloyal piece of shit." I grumbled, selecting _Bach's Mass in B minor_ on my Tact. Pad for my erratically behaving Onix. We all clambered down into the bunker, before Damascus hunkered over us, and then my Rock-Snake shifted a layer of loose soil over his exposed beads; concealing both his glimmering presence and the bunker entrance.

"Alright, is every head accounted for?" I asked Lieutenant Crosby. The Vets all answered to roll call, before I released the safety pin on the detonator's primary trigger guard.

"All units standby for detonation-" I flipped open the trigger guard, and placed my finger on the switch.

"-Countdown begins at T-minus ten. Ten-"

"-Nine."

"-Eight."

"-Seven."

"-Six."

"-Five."

"-Four."

"-Three."

"-Two."

"-One."

"-FIRE IN THE HOLE!" I hollered as my finger smashed the trigger into the switchboard.

-That has to be one of my favorite phrases to shout out loud. Everytime I get to say it, something beautiful happens.

In this case, a Beedrill hive just disappeared into a white cloud of papery debris and concussive noise. We could feel the explosion's vibrations shaking dirt loose from the walls of our hastily constructed bunker.

"First clear-all is primed! Get ready for the chop!" I called out. I peeked out from a crack between Damascus's earth covered bulk and the bunker's ridge. Now we were just waiting.

-Waiting for the rodeo to show up.

It didn't take too long for the first crowd to arrive. A couple of rustling Tangela and screeching Fearows entered the perimeter of ground zero within minutes of post-devastation. Some Poliwhirls followed the first line up, hammering their wiggling guts with their slimy mitts. Then a lone Oddish joined the fray.

"Fuck… Come on, you dirty little Mankeys… get my tab into the clear…" I begged, while Lieutenant Crosby slapped me on the shoulder. The other Vets were alternatively mourning and celebrating their own bets.

"-YES! A MANKEY! THERE'S A FUCKING MANKEY IN THE TREES!" I had never been so happy to see a filthy little monkey-mon before in my life. Lieutenant Crosby buried his laughter in a palm. I was now five Sandz richer because of that stupid little Mankey.

It was almost a shame that I was gonna have to blow his ass up in less than a minute.

 _-Almost._

"Okay, they're getting angsty. Let's sweep this crowd, and prime the secondary clear-all. Standby for detonation. T-minus five seconds. Five-." I started the countdown immediately after I saw a Tangela beginning to swap blows with a Poliwhirl. We couldn't have the mon breaking out into a murderous brawl. They might leave the clear-all's radius, or even upset the primers once they started going apeshit on one another.

"-Four."

"-Three."

"-Two."

"-One."

"-FIRE IN THE HOLE!"

I flipped the first clear-all's switch, and a ring of C4 and shrap-pack detonated right underneath the feet of all those furious mon.

"HELL YES!"

The baited mon disappeared just like the Beedrill's hive had, except the vapor left behind by this lot was noticeably ruddy in coloration. You could hardly see the red mist through all the dust, though.

-But we could still hear the sound of mon chunks hitting the ground in a fleshy downpour shortly after the explosion's echo had rebounded back to the point of origin.

 _-I love my job._

"The second clear-all is primed. Let's see what the mon bring in next." My voice was getting something giddy. This is what I lived for.

 _-The fucking BOOM._

"We've got more Mankeys and Bidoofs incoming. And there's my late Shromishes. Man, they look pissed-! -Holy fuck! We've got an Abra! A FUCKING ABRA JUST TELEPORTED IN! Permission to blow the clear-all prematurely!" I was bouncing on the balls of my feet with an uncontrollable glee.

I've blown up tonnes of mon before. Metric shit loads of mon.

-But I ain't never blown up a sneaky as hell Abra.

"Are the mon within the perimeter of the charges?" Lieutenant Crosby hastily asked. I took my eyes of the rare psion prize and made a deft calculation.

"It'll leave some big pieces, but their chance of survival is non-existent. They'll still get hit with the concussion. The outlying mon will choke to death on their own hemorrhaging lungs." I reported.

"Permission granted. Blast that psion into kingdom come before it picks up on our intentions and teleports the hell outta dodge." Lieutenant Crosby ordered.

"-FIRE IN THE FUCKING HOLE!" I hollered, flipping clear-all number two's switch into the ignition setting.

 _BOOM._

-That Abra was toast at the flick of a switch. And so was all his little mon buddies.

"Confirmed kill! One less psion for Cerulean to worry about! Priming clear-all number three!"

The survivors of clear-all number two were already on the ground, seizuring as they bled to death from within. Some of the still living mon were missing a lot more than their intact alveoli. Several Bidoofs had been blown damn near in half, and a shellshocked Primeape was dragging its bloody stumps right over the hidden charges of clear-all number three.

"...Don't worry, fugly. It'll all be over with soon." I growled, flipping the trigger guard off clear-all number three's ignition switch.

"Last clear-all is primed. This is the long fuse. We are holding out for the stragglers. If you gents have any last minute bets to make, now's the time to put your money where your mouth is." The Fucking Bastard shot his evilest grin at the gathered Vets.

None of us were fucking worried about the hordes of bloodthirsty mon converging one-hundred-and-fifty meters north of our Bunker. This was as textbook as Ranger work could get.

We were shooting Feebas in a fucking barrel, and after clear-all number three blew, all we had to do was sit underground for half-an-hour, telling jokes and counting Sandz; until we were absolutely positive that nothing nasty was arriving late to the party.

"Okay, we've got the swing-shift crews coming in. There ain't much left in this portion of sector Alpha. T-minus two minutes till detonation." I watched as several smaller hordes moved into the bloody devastation of the Beedrill's old hive.

"Shit, I still don't see why we don't just bomb mon like this every fucking day." A Vet chuckled.

"We don't have enough ordnance for that, and we never did. And this tactic doesn't work against certain mon. Look up the war on mon following the Brink Collapse. If blowing mon up could have killed 'em all, they would've been able to do it back then." I grumbled, wiping a sheen of sweat off my brow. The anticipation was killing me, and the stuffy bunker wasn't making it any easier on my pores.

"Did they really hit Regigigas with a nuke?" One Vet asked me in a suspicious voice. I snorted hard enough to burn my nasal cavities.

"No, they hit him with two nukes. Regigigas walked it off in a month's time. After that, we just stopped using nuclear ballistics altogether. The aftereffects of a naked fusion reaction in the earth's atmosphere hit us a lot harder than it hit the mon." I grumbled.

"Well, shit. Thank God the Lima-Threes are all gone." Another Vet muttered.

"Yeah, small miracle that. Too bad they didn't disappear sooner." I spat.

"Alright, standby for detonation. It's getting quiet out there. Time to make a ruckus. T-minus fifteen seconds. Lieutenant Crosby, would you like to do the honors?" I asked, offering the ignition switchboard to my Superior Officer.

"It would be my pleasure." Lieutenant Crosby peeled his gloves off, and took the ignition switchboard from me with a grin.

"You have the football, make the play in T-minus Five-"

"-Four."

"-Three."

"-Two."

"-One."

"-LET THERE BE LIGHT!" Lieutenant Crosby shouted as he flicked the switch. Every Ranger in the bunker collectively held their breath.

...It took us about fives seconds to release that same breath.

"...Aw, FUCK!" I spat.

There was no boom.

"-That's not supposed to happen?" A concerned Lieutenant Crosby asked me, and my palm met my face at high velocity.

"-Give me the switchboard. Oh, please don't be a dud…" I begged, taking the switchboard from my CO. I primed the detonator again, before hitting the ignition switch.

Nothing.

"FUCK!"

-We had a dud clear-all.

"Gimme a second, gimme a sec… Let me try this…" I tied clear-all three's detonator into clear-all two's ignition switch, before repeating the prime/ignition process all over again.

Still fucking nothing.

"Aw, crap... The remote primer might have come loose from an earlier explosion. But I packed that shit in tight. That shouldn't-"

 _-BOOOOOM!_

Every Ranger hit the deck.

 _-That was a big one._

It was _intentionally_ big, I should add.

...As I had promised Lt. Col Rionaldo, I wasn't pocketing any leftover ordnance.

-Mostly because I had made damn sure that there _wasn't going to be any leftover ordnance._

Every last gram of C4 and ANFO that I had left went straight into hive number four's final clear-all.

The last explosion of the day was also gonna be the biggest.

We could all feel that concussion shaking our lungs and rattling our teeth.

 _-I might have overdone it just a little._

 _...Just a little._

"WHaT-"

"InnN-"

"THe-"

"SAne-"

"HELL-"

" _-WaS THat?!"_

I could barely hear Lieutenant Crosby through the numb ringing in my ears.

Damn.

This was gonna be another one of my Sapper horror stories.

"...Delayed detonation. -That happens sometimes."

I couldn't even hear my own voice.

"-Is everybody alive?" I asked from my position on the ground.

" _-Umph..."_ The Ranger closest to me had both fingers in his ears, and he was choking on the falling dust. I patted him firmly on the shoulder, and held my curved index finger and thumb together in the ' _Are you okay?'_ hand symbol. After he took a moment to collect his stunned wits, the wide-eyed Ranger gave me the thumbs-up.

"Fuck me. That was loud…" Still sitting on my ass, I planted my shoulders against the bunker wall, and breathed out a sigh of relief.

"-Was it supposed to be _that_ loud?!" Lieutenant Crosby rounded on me.

Oh fuck…

 _-Think quick, Zane..._

"-I configured the primers to detonate the charges in a chain sequence. The delayed detonation must have ignited every primer at once. -That's why it was so damn loud."

I lied through my fucking teeth. I could have killed us all with my reckless overdose of fun. But my CO didn't need to know that. As long as Lieutenant Crosby didn't see the manifest detailing my ordnance usage, then I could play on his ignorance of demolitions procedure and keep my Ranger's badge on my chest.

This type of shit right here could get me _dishonorably discharged_ from the Ranger Corps.

This wasn't the first time that something like this had happened.

...If I haven't clarified it in the past…

 _-My Sapper exploits are the stuff of nightmares._

"God almighty… I thought that was gonna kill us all..." Lieutenant Crosby gasped, putting a hand over his hammering heart.

I tried not to swallow.

-I didn't want to let on how accurate Lieutenant Crosby's fearful admission was.

"...So what now?" One shaken Vet asked the bunker.

"-Now? We wait." I grunted, lifting myself to my feet.

"Hey Gramps! You okay?" I walloped one of the ivory beads above my head with a closed fist.

 _-RUMBLE._

I don't even know why I was worried about Damascus. That far-off explosion was fucking tiny compared to some of the shit that had scourged Damascus in the war following the Brink Collapse.

"That's my beautiful snake. Hold up a little longer, Damascus. Once we're sure that the perimeter is secure, I'm putting your stony ass on R&R. You did a damn good job today, Gramps. A fucking fine ass job." I gave Damascus's beads a few more fond pats, before settling down into the bunker, and then I punched in my snake's favorite classical playlist on a shuffled loop.

Damascus had done a spectacular job today.

He hadn't even attacked me once.

 _-It was a new personal best._

…

We were back at Cerulean Prime Outpost, stuffing our faces in the mess hall. A thorough medical examination had relieved me of any guilt after my inappropriate and dangerous demolition. No one had been seriously injured, and the only wound of note was one Vet's shattered eardrum. It hurt like a bitch, but it wasn't going to render him deaf. Besides, he got to kick back on the R&R scene for week while he waited for his eardrum to recover.

The Fucking Bastard was still getting the guest of honor treatment, and after my temporary Cerulean command had filled the mess hall with the tales of my day's deeds, a laughing and cheering collection of Cerulean Vets were raising their soup cups in a toast to me.

-Strangely, I was okay with this.

They were applauding the destruction of four Beedrill hives and the slaughter of hundreds of mon. Not revering the Fucking Bastard as a war hero.

"-And then... and then Lieutenant Crosby stood up out of the trench! He was all like, 'They're dead, and I ain't waiting around for the dust settle,' -and then…" One of the Vets I'd served with was choking to death on his own laughter as he recounted the aftermath of hive three.

"-And then he got a facefull of the red mist! He started retching and choking on that vile cloud, and we were all laughing in the trench-"

I was laughing myself. The memory of Lieutenant Crosby's premature departure was pretty fucking funny.

"I told him not to get up, but he was gonna be the tough guy and-" I started, still chuckling.

-A sudden snapping of heels and flying salutes interrupted me as every Ranger at my table rose to attention. I followed suit and about-faced.

"Warrant Officer Bastard." Colonel Merrien released the gathering from our salute, and brought the entire mess hall's awareness onto my person. I in turn, gave Colonel Merrien my fullest attention.

She was pretty young for a Colonel. I pegged the blonde Regiment Commander before me as somewhere in between forty and forty-three years of age, her face lacking even one meaningful wrinkle to mar her stern expression.

"Yes sir?" I replied. The Colonel's left cheek twitched. One of Colonel Merrien's Aides approached us, his left arm draped in a white sheet.

"I called an old friend of mine when I learned that you were visiting my Outpost. A good old friend of mine. Somebody you might remember. And this friend of mine made a little request of me." Colonel Merrien shifted something out of the crook of her arm. My eyes lit up the very instant I saw what it was.

"Colonel Isaac Howes sends his regards." Colonel Merrien smiled, handing me an amber bottle of fifty-year old scotch.

"You old coot…" I whispered fondly of my Viridian Commander, as I accepted the bottle from Colonel Merrien.

This was the good stuff. My paycheck couldn't even cover the cost of this untapped bottle. This one bottle was worth more than half of my annual pay.

"It's not every Ranger who gets to drink liquor almost three times their own age in my mess hall." Colonel Merrien snapped a white gloved hand, and the Aide behind her quickly whipped off the linen cloth concealing a silver platter of crystal snifters in his arms.

"-As a matter of fact, if said Rangers won't share their exquisite beverage… Then they can turn their bottle over to a superior officer for detainment." Colonel Merrien selected a snifter from the silver platter, and leveled her crystal with my scotch.

"Fair enough." I grinned, popping the wax seal off the cork and prying the bottle open. I poured Colonel Merrien her drink, before filling a snifter of my own.

"Ad honorem, Warrant Officer Bastard." Colonel Merrien raised her snifter.

"Ad honorem, Colonel." We clinked our crystals together in a toast, before we both sampled a lick of my favorite drink.

-And then every fucking Ranger in the fucking mess hall lined up for a hit of my scotch.

...That bottle was more than half-empty when I finally got it back from them.

...I could have broken down weeping for all that premium scotch that I was never gonna taste.

…

"Alright, I gotta a question for you boys." I sat back down in the mess hall after guaranteeing that my remaining scotch was securely hidden. I was saving the last of it for a special occasion. A very special occasion. There was more than just some supreme quality liquor in my half-empty bottle of gifted scotch. Something of a nostalgic sentiment had filled all that empty space now.

"Shoot." The Vets were grinning. The smug fucks were still gloating over their opportunistic binge at my expense.

"Where's the best view of Wrecker Cape?" I asked, pulling my Tact. Pad out. The Vets exchanged a glance.

"-Looking for a photoshoot?" One Vet asked with a quirked eyebrow.

I pursed my lips.

"Kind of. I knew a kid back in Viridian. A cartographer. He… Well… I thought-" I cleared my throat, and maintained my composure.

-But these were Vets.

They heard exactly what I was trying not to say.

"His name was Erin. He was a good kid... A good Ranger." I couldn't keep the sting out of my eyes, even though the rest me could pull off the facade.

...I don't know why I thought that snapping pics of Kanto's landmarks was something that Erin would approve of.

 _...I don't know why I was trying so hard to keep their memory alive…_

"Do you have a GPS on that?" One of the Vets asked me in a soft voice, indicating my Tact. Pad with a nod. I pulled up the navigation menu, and handed my Tact. Pad over to him.

"Alright, let me see… There we go. That's where you want to be." The Vet set a waypoint on my Tact. Pad, and returned the device to me.

"You get there by sunset, and you're gonna be in for a real treat. Just be aware that the highlighted route crosses over the White Warrens. There's Parasect in those rocks that come out at night. You won't find any clean water, much to eat, no dry vegetation for tinder, or even a soft place to sleep. But if you want the best photo-op in all of Cerulean, then you've gotta risk a safari to get into position." The coordinate providing Vet gave me the blow-by-blow.

"I'll pack some MREs and extra water then. And I'm not worried about sleeping on the rocks. I've been in shittier places before." I snapped my Tact. Pad shut with a sigh.

"Might want to hit up Sickbay for some booster shots and antivenoms. Those Parasects are fucking nasty if they get you with their spores. You and your mon are gonna want every form of protection that you can get, just to ensure that you all don't get your septic-ridden corpses picked clean by the mushroom-crabs." Another Vet suggested.

"Thanks. I'll definitely go do that then. But my Vauban's a Saboteur Class. She ain't got nothing to worry about." I managed to smile when I settled back into my chair.

-Speaking of my Vauban...

 _...I could really use my sweet little girl right now._

"A Saboteur? Can she detect spore emissions?" A Vet asked.

"Yeah, but my Growlithe is the best Pathfinder-"

"-Deploy them both. A Pathfinder's nose gets all kinds of fucked up if they inhale the spores. That parasitic shit will kill a Growlithe's olfactory receptors before they can even relay the nasal infection to the brain. Keep your Pathfinder pathfinding, but use your Saboteur as a microbe detector. You'll get through the White Warrens without a hitch." The Vet gave me a friendly smile.

I reflected that smile to the best of my ability.

"Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it." I tapped my beret and inclined my head to the gathered Greenbacks. Then I stood up and made to leave the mess hall, so that I could finish my preparations for a trip into the White Warrens.

"Warrant Officer Bastard?" One Vet called out to me before I had even put down more than five paces.

I turned around, well aware of just how beaten the expression on my face was.

"-It was an honor meeting you." The Vet rose to his feet with every other Ranger in the mess hall. Then a roomful of salutes were raised to me.

Again. Yet again I was made to play this cancerous role.

 _I don't want this…_

A shaking breath accompanied my raised arm.

"The honor was mine, Rangers. Ad honorem." A hoarse voice replied, as I released the Cerulean Rangers from their salutes.

" _AD HONOREM."_ That mantra resounded throughout the mess hall in a deep chorus.

...I was never gonna get accustomed to playing this role.

"..."

"...And even here at the end…"

"..."

" _...I still can't accept it…"_

…

"Okay Gramps, that's enough soaking for now." I sighed, switching off Damascus's music. The loose soil beneath me had something to say about that.

 _RUMBLE._

"Come on, Damascus… Would you just give me a fucking break? I can't leave your crazy ass behind at Cerulean Prime; and anyways? I'm heading back out into the Frontier. You gonna come with me or not?" I halfheartedly kicked the shifting dirt beneath me.

 _Rumble…_

Thank God. My grudge-happy snake wasn't going to shaft me for interrupting his nap.

"Get up here, you old shit. I'll let you out on the return journey. I don't need you catching parasites from the Parasect. Scrubbing down your bulk is a two-day affair. But the Parasect are nocturnal, so by tomorrow morning I can allot you some slithering time." I filled Damascus in on the plan as he poked his conical head above the shuffling earth.

"All the way up, Gramps. You know how the Pokeball works."

... _Rumble._

One disgruntled Onix pulled his pearlescent body up on to solid land, and shook the mud from his beads with a quiver. I still couldn't believe how pretty Damascus was. I'd practically lived with this snake back in Viridian, when we both served together under Doug.

Yet every time the sun lit up his golden whorls, my breath would still catch in my throat; just like it had back when I first met Damascus. My two-thousand year old snake...

All that time and abuse had weathered this once ugly Rock-Snake into an almost surreal piece of art. I couldn't help myself from picking the sticky mud out of Damascus's rippled jade horn-scar with an expression of reverence.

"You know, Gramps… Sooner or later, you and I are gonna figure it out…" I slapped the smooth cheek below one of Damascus's uniformly milky blue eyes. Damascus turned to face me directly, before his elongated plate of a top jaw lifted above his heavy sledge of a lower jaw, and my grumpy old snake belched an ammonia hurricane right into my face.

"Fuck you, you old bitch!" I fell back coughing, desperately fanning at the air and spray with my hand.

 _RUMBLE._

My fucking senile Onix was laughing at me.

"Damascus, you are dismissed!"

-Bitch.

I hold your Heavy Ball.

-So fuck you.

"I swear to God, Damascus… We're either gonna hit it off, or one of us is gonna end up killing the other…" I growled down to his Heavy Ball as I returned it to my belt, before I selected two of the standard G.I. Pokeballs from the three that rested next to Damascus.

"Vauban, Cortez. Report." Two beams of white light condensed into my stalwart Growlithe and my sweet little girl.

"Alright you two. Here's the sit-rep. We're going out on a little safari north into sector Delta. We're going to be climbing hills, and navigating karsts. There's no soil, no clean water, no shrub, and virtually no edible food where we're going. So you two are going to be carrying your own mess and water. On top of that, I'm gonna give you two the rundown on Cerulean's indigenous roster. Cortez, bear with me, cause I know that you already know it." I started strapping harnesses onto my two quadruped mon, before outfitting the tack with saddle bags stuffed with my mons' grub, water, and meds.

"Vauban, we have Parasect in these rocks. That's why you're out alongside me and Cortez. I need you to signal alerts when you start picking up spore emissions. Cortez and I will hit the dope, and then you're going to find us a path around the cloud. Watch Cortez when he's pathfinding. He'll show you the navigating ropes. Now for the list of other shit that we have to worry about."

"Beedrill, obviously. No point in reviewing something that we're all very familiar with."

"Glooms and Vileplumes. We're in the jungle now, so the jungle mon are something that we have to worry about. Fortunately, for two mon species that are almost as toxic as you, Vauban; Glooms and Vileplumes are pretty docile as long as you don't piss 'em off. And don't let that Bulbasaur curiosity get the better of you. If you smell rotting meat, you are not to investigate. That smell ain't a free meal, Vauban. That smell is a Vileplume's bloom, looking to lure tasty little Bulbasaurs into a sticky trap."

"The Weepinbell, Victreebel, Tangela, and the Tangrowth. They'll eat anything and everything, but all four of them prefer to bait and snare big game, rather than go hunting for it. The rule for avoiding these four mon is pretty simple. Don't step on any constrictor vines, and don't stick your head into any tangles or pitcher plants. If one of these mon manages to kill you, then you deserve to die for being fucking stupid. Moving on."

"The Abras and the Kadabras. Yeah, I ain't too keen on tangling with psions either, but thankfully; these two are pretty rare. Abras will virtually never engage prey that travels in a posse, so the three of us grouped together provides a deterrent. Kadabras are stupid rare, so I hesitate to even mention them. But if one of these freaks does shows up, then be prepared for anything. Kadabras can use their Psychokinesis to move around stupid quick, and they can electromagnetically charge their targets faster than almost any other psion. They also have some ridiculously oversized Phrenosensu nodes, so a Kadabra's ESP will trump even Cortez's nose. Fortunately, beyond throwing shit around at mach ten and being an absolute bitch to hit; Kadabras are not adept at Hypnotic-Dictation, especially the feral ones. We don't have to worry about cognitive incapacitation. And Damascus will make a Kadabra regret the day it was born when twenty-two tonnes of Onix squishes the wily little bitch into the Cerulean limestone."

"Fearow, standard shit. Nothing that we haven't dealt with before."

"Clefairy and Clefable. Yep, there be fairies in them hills. They play pretty timid initially, and both have a tendency to imitate distress and gratitude as a baiting tactic. Hell, they may even try hugging you when you 'rescue' them. They'll also try leading you on all friendly-like, just to trick you into following them over to their dens. But once they drag you into their clan's ring, your skin is coming off in sheets; and they'll actually cook your still screaming, skinless corpse medium-rare before they eat you. If a Clefairy starts doing its victim routine for us, then we'll play along for a bit. But _I've_ got first dibs on gutting the sick little fucker alive when we're done fucking around with it."

"Poliwraths and Politoeds. Poliwraths are territorial and aggressive, but even I can smell them before they'll be able to pick up on us. Either way, Poliwraths are not something that I'm particularly worried about. They're fairly strong and robust, but they don't take well to getting cut open. Think of these guys as Cerulean's version of the Nidorino, minus the pack formation and venom, but with more bulk and power. Cortez knows how to take down a mon three times his own size, and Vauban can trip up shit as big as the Ursaring. You two do what you're good at, and then you let me do what I'm good at. You knock 'em down and I'll cut the fucker up into kibbles, and then we'll save on our rations by boiling his mucous-coated ass down into stew. Politoeds are actually pretty timid. They're nasty in a fight with their powerful kicks, but outside of their mating seasons, they'll only engage if first met with a hostile incursion. If we leave them alone, then they'll leave us alone."

"Vigoroths and Slakings. Yeah. These are Cerulean's big ones. Scary as hell. Slakings are almost Snorlax scary. Slakings can tear a Nidoking apart like the Nidos are made of string cheese. Funnily enough, Slakings and Vigoroths are both vegetarian. Vigoroths are territorial, but they generally make more bark than bite. If a shrewdness of Vigoroths start hollering at us, then we're gonna give them their space. They typically won't engage unwilling adversaries, so retreat is our best option. Slakings are in the same vote, except that they're even less likely to chase you if you run. They'd make the Delta-Five list in a heartbeat if they would actually get off their fat asses and wreck shit, but Slakings are some lazy sons of bitches."

"Primeapes and Mankey. Textbook bipedal tactics. Shitloads of adrenaline. About as violent as a mon can get. Other than that; all you need to know is that if we see either one of these two mon, then we're killing the filthy little monkey on general principle."

"The Ninetales and the Zoroarks. Like the aforementioned Abras and Kadabras, these are another two different species of fox-mon with some similarities in their hunting tactics. Both love to fuck with your head. Ninetales will use Hypnotic-Dictation to mess your life up, and Zoroarks can use the Distortion's gravitational anomalies to bend light and fabricate some crazy fucking illusions. If we come across something that doesn't have a shadow or make any noise, then it's probably a Zoroark's illusion and we are going on high alert. Check your targets for their shadows before you engage them. It may look like a Tangela, but if that Tangela is casting the shadow of a handsome Ranger in a beret; then that Tangela is probably me. Zoroarks have wiped out entire Ranger Squads before by using only their illusions to scare the units into killing one another off. So let's not join the deceased's ranks as another Zoroark-victim statistic. As for the Ninetales, they like to get inside their prey's head and shut 'em down before blowtorching them. So if you start feeling a buzzing sensation in your dome, remember the counter cognitive assault training that we received back in the academy. All three of us are smarter than a feral Ninetales, so it shouldn't be to hard for us to use their mind game antics against them. Just make sure that you prep your head before they start rerouting your synapses. If you're too late on the draw, then the Ninetales has already won. Fortunately, and I really mean _fortunately_ ; Ibn Taymiyyah's Code applies. Both the Ninetales and the Zoroarks are as rare as fuck."

"Dratini and Dragonair. I ain't shitting either one of you. As of last year, the Cerulean Rangers have confirmed Dragon colonies forming up on the northern edge of Wrecker Cape's coast. They're generally seen out in the water hunting on the reefs, but sometimes they'll ditch the fish and go ashore for the red meat. We don't want to fight any Dragons. You can cut a fucking Dratini in half, and it will still come flying at you in a homicidal rage as if nothing has changed. Dragons don't know what pain is, but they sure love inflicting it. If a Dragon does jump us, then Damascus is our best recourse. I wouldn't expect a Dratini to back off even if it's fighting a snake eight times its own size, but that's just the way they're programmed. Dragons are fucking crazy, and they would rather die in battle then flee for their lives. But if we do end up engaging one, then I'm gonna try my hand at catching it before we elect to kill it. Even if they're feral, Dragons still sell like hotcakes on the market, and I wouldn't say no to a little extra Sandz in my pocket."

"Those are the most common or most dangerous threats this far north in Cerulean. Now we all know what to expect, so keep your eyes peeled and your nasty attitudes at the ready. We are going to be spending the night in the White Warrens, so this qualifies as a safari. But as far as safaris go, this should be a great primer for our match against Misty. A Gym Leader is nothing compared to a night in the Frontier. So let's try not to die before we take on the Tomboy Mermaid." I finished with a rallying speech for my two mon, who looked none the worse despite the connotations.

This safari may have sounded like one hell of a risk for just a measly photo, but I needed to escape from the crazy world for a little bit.

Murderous monsters with a diverse menagerie of weaponry was something that I could handle.

-But all of this crap at Cerulean Prime Outpost and Blackhat HQ?

...I needed to get away from it, and clear my head. My standing orders were to prepare my team for engagement with the Cerulean City Gym Leader, and not one Ranger was going to label a safari into Wrecker Cape's Frontier as anything other than a thorough training regimen.

It was the perfect excuse to leave society behind for a bit, and go take my tumultuous emotions out on the feral mon and their Frontier.

And while I was at it, I'd also get a decent picture for that scrapbook I was putting together…

"Cortez, Vauban. Both of you are on point, three meters ahead. Take it slowly, Cortez. I want you to teach Vauban the basics. Once Cortez gives you a vote of confidence, Vauban; you are going to be stuck on that hound's hairy ass like a dried turd. Let's move out." I gave my orders with the tone of command, and both my dinosaur and my dog hurried to carry it out. We had only just crossed the from the L-straight and into sector Delta when my team element was showing off its stuff. Vauban was ever the attentive little pupil, and Cortez was ever the patient little teacher. It made me smile just watching the two of them working together like they did.

I always knew that those two had some kind of secret bond that they never really showed to me, but even so, it was still pretty obvious that Vauban and Cortez were tight as squadmates. Generally, mon of dissimilar species don't really connect with one another, even after having been through the worlds of shit that me and my Squad had been through together. But Vauban was an absolute doll, who treated everyone like a friend. And Cortez?

-Well, Cortez and Vauban's bond made a whole lot more sense, after I had learned a bit more about my mysterious dog.

...And what he had lost along with his former CO…

…

"Hold up, Vauban."

We were roughly eight klicks away from my Tact. Pad's designated photo op waypoint when I called for another rest. Something was bugging me.

"-Are you okay, girl?" I asked, cautiously approaching my Bulbasaur.

Vauban was shaking like a leaf in the breeze from her bulb to her toes.

"Vauban?" I put my hand on her twitching shoulder, and my little girl jumped.

"Cortez, get over here." My voice sounded worried. Cortez wasn't too far off, but he was every bit as wary as I was when he approached Vauban and I.

Vauban's bulb was quivering. Which was generally a Bulbasaur's biological que for an incoming pollen dispersal. But Vauban hadn't spewed me with any of her toxic pollen yet, and this was the third stop we had made for addressing her peculiar behavior. Vauban shook herself out of it by the time Cortez caught up to us.

"What's going on, girl?" I gave my flower toad a thorough examination. Other than a nervous look in Vauban's eyes, there wasn't anything wrong with my Bulbasaur.

"Are you having a reaction to the spores?" I asked, feeling Vauban's neck for a pulse.

Vauban swallowed.

My little girl had done her navigation duty as well as I would have expected from Cortez. Vauban had found two spore clouds on our trip north, and both times she had successfully led Cortez and I around the invisible emission. While Cortez and I hit the dope, Vauban probed the ground we were walking on, checking for any fungal dispersing leavings beneath the rocks. We made it through both fields without stepping into a Parasect's excrement, which was the pathogen equivalent of an anti-personnel mine.

Vauban had done me proud, but I was beginning to suspect that I had overestimated Vauban's toxin absorbing constitution. I was rifling through Cortez's share of the meds when I finally caved into precaution.

"Keep it cool, girl. I'm gonna give you a booster shot and a little hit of the dope. If the spores really are fucking with you, then the meds will fight 'em off." I stripped the packaging off a booster shot, and prepped the dosage accordingly. Pinching one Vauban's belly scutes, I exposed the tender dermis beneath the scale, and sank the syringe needle directly into Vauban's external iliac artery, before dumping the cylinder into her bloodstream.

"Just take it easy for now, Vauban." I pressed an inhaler into Vauban's mouth, and gave her a solid shot of fungus-neutralizing antibodies to the tonsils and the soft tissues below her tongue. Vauban hacked a bit on the dope's vapors; but with a quick toss of her head, my steadfast little girl moved to resume her split position on poll with Cortez.

I was keeping a close eye on my little girl as she Cortez covered the last eight klicks in record time. My theory pertaining to Vauban's illness seemed well founded, given that after the medical attention; my sweet Vauban didn't even hint at a symptom of another one of those unusual episodes coming down on her.

-But my little girl still looked wicked nervous.

We made it to the waypoint roughly ten minutes before sundown, giving me plenty of time to scope out a decent range for my photo take. I was looking down at something pretty special on a high ridge above the karst, and breathtaking though it was…

...It had all the charm of a graveyard.

…

Wrecker Cape had formed almost fourteen hundred years ago when good ol' Regigigas had one of his decade-long tantrums, and decided that the earth's tectonic face needed rearranging. The Walking Mountain carved a trench from South America all the way over to the east Asia coast in his mad pursuit of the deep sea dwelling Kyogre. According to the historical records, Kyogre hadn't exactly faired well in one of the Lima-Three's many pissing contests, and he was in desperate need of a medical leave that would spare the wounded whale from any of the Lima-Three's future dick fights.

-But Regigigas was pretty single-minded in his hunt for the injured King Orca. I guess that Regigigas didn't want his buddy Kyogre missing out on all the fun, and Regigigas made that rabid intent known when he finally gave up on trying to dig Kyogre out of the north pacific's expansive abyssal plain…

...And just decided to bury the fucking King Orca with a continent instead.

I don't know why Regigigas hoofed it all the way back to South America for his continent. Australia was so much closer, but I suppose that the Lima-Threes weren't quite as brilliant as they were fucking powerful.

Because after a decade of fishing through the abyss's mud for a giant fucking whale, all it took Regigigas was a week to plow the fucking western coast of South America into the eastern coast of Asia.

-The Terra Divide.

It should have killed us all.

Life had not evolved on this planet to keep up with that rate of environmental change, or the aftermath that resulted from such a massive level of tectonic commotion. Contemporary humanity thought that Regigigas was going to rip the earth in half with that crazy stunt of his. But thanks to good ol' Regigigas and his consecrated marriage of the Andes Mountains and the East China Sea, only half of the world had to weather through a mere two-hundred years of fallout-induced winter while we waited for the dust to settle.

-And when the dust finally did settle, we had to completely reconfigure all of the earth's maps; thanks to a couple of missing continents, a couple of reshaped ones, and a couple of misplaced ones.

But one of the earth's new locations that caught the rapt attentions of humanity's geologists, cartographers, and marine biologists in the years following the Terra Divide; was the northeastern coast of Kanto. Most notably, a location that was dubbed Wrecker Cape centuries later when the Cerulean district was first settled by seafaring man.

Wrecker Cape.

One of the most treacherous of the earth's waterways known in the Post-Brink era. It started with one nasty alien limestone landmass collapsing directly into an abyssal trench, before mountainesque reefs cropped up in the waters surrounding ground zero; right on the sunken remains of South America's north-eastern ridge. Which allowed for the newly-submerged nutrient-rich Amazonian basin to feed a wild variety of coral colonies all along the northeastern Kantonese coast.

From an aquatic mon's perspective, Wrecker Cape has it all. Two opposing oceanic currents merge right before the coast's plunge into the abyssal trench. The northeastern current carries warm and heavily oxidized water south from the equator, and the southeastern current comes in packing the ice cold and nutrient enriched water traveling north from the southern ocean. On top of the two different oceanic currents providing northeastern Kanto with two dissimilar types of temperate water, Wrecker Cape also has a diverse arrangement of sub aquatic geological habitats that has allowed for the unseasonal birth and rearing of almost every species of aquatic mon known to man; which effectively means that food is never in short supply at crazy ol' Wrecker Cape.

...But from mankind's nautical perspective of Wrecker Cape?

...Aquatic hell is all of one fathom down.

It's not just the mon, though you can well imagine the kind of problems that Wrecker Cape's deep sea behemoths plague the fishing trawlers and shipping lanes with.

Wrecker Cape is primarily considered so nautically lethal because there could be a Goddamn mountain peak half a fathom below the deep water's surface, and you wouldn't even know about it until after you had already scuttled your vessel all across a long sunken sierra range.

Humanity has managed to map Wrecker Cape's dangerous locales out pretty damn accurately; but even so, the weather phenomenon is absolutely rampant in a location as environmentally chaotic as Wrecker Cape. Thanks to Wrecker Cape's near equatorial position, the pair of opposingly temperate oceanic currents, and the geological nightmare right beneath the ocean's surface…

...Every day is the perfect day for a perfect storm at Wrecker Cape.

…

"Am I the only one who sees tombstones when I look at that?" I asked my resting dog and tired dinosaur when I looked out across that limestone expanse.

Cortez said nothing.

Vauban just wheezed uneasily.

"Yeah, that is something to see. And I'm already feeling more depressed for it." I grunted, drawing out my Tact. Pad.

The White Warren's deep secret.

The Cold Boutique.

Thousands of shearing limestone spires stretching up into the moody Cerulean sky.

Not a visible scrap of living anything within sight for leagues.

Just a short uniformly white sanded shore connecting the Cold Boutique's spires to the coast…

...Before a spider web's network of jagged faults broke the entire karst up.

Add to that desolate scene the countless perfectly circular deep pits of sterile milky blue water, clouding around the interiors of their layered shores...

And the occasional cry of a seafaring avian mon…

...And the Cold Boutique just makes for an unnaturally miserable place.

"That is just fucking creepy." I shuddered, spitting off to the side.

This was unique. I'd never seen anything like this on earth. It didn't look like a piece of the earth. It looked like the shattered white aretes of an alien world.

...A dead alien world.

"That is something else…" I muttered, snapping a picture of the Cold Boutique with my Tact. Pad before the recomended due time.

Alexandria made a nervous warbling as he processed the image.

And I was to overcome by this scene to harass him.

But that feeling of awe was nothing compared to the breathtaking vista that revealed itself to me when the descending sun's golden rays pierced the reddening skies.

The entire karst began to glimmer.

It took my awestruck brain forever to pin the culprit responsible for the Cold Boutique's second face.

- _Gypsum_.

Those crystalline shards permeated the spires and the sand, creating a surreal shimmer over the entire Cold Boutique. The cloudy pools of water turned a new shade of baby blue as the angled rays of sunlight diffracted through their sediment thick layers; and darker whorls of limestone were revealed in the dying day's final beams, casting serpentine bruises across the Cold Boutique's entire range.

It was beautiful.

It was unearthly.

It would become one of the most haunting memories that I would know in the months to come.

I had just enough sense at dusk's climax of a painting to snap a picture of the perfect place at the perfect moment.

...Even if Erin didn't give a shit about my photographs of Kanto's landmarks…

...I knew that he would've still loved to have see this…

That first new breath filled my ruined lungs with a rattle. I could feel my single eye warming up.

I didn't fight it.

Here, I could let it out.

Here, I was alone with those who already knew me.

So far away from all those people, all those Rangers just looking for a hero…

Here...

...I didn't have to hide it from those eyes.

It took a couple of moments after sundown had hidden the glimmering marvel again for me to collect the scattered pieces of myself. They more or less just fell into their proper order, untangling the worn fibers of my mind, while loosening the cold weight in my chest; leaving me feeling whole, but hollow…

I was me again. That little me I had tried so hard to bury so long ago.

For this one perfect moment...

...I could be me again…

When my heavy breath could finally be offered in a voice, I summoned up my steel; and hoarsely called to my two awaiting mon.

"...Okay, Rangers. Let's go find a campsite. I'm not stupid enough to try and navigate a karst in the dark, so let's call it-"

 _And that-_

-That's as far as I got.

 _The fucking mon_.

They always have the shittiest timing.

And this mon's appearance was so spontaneous that my weary brain couldn't even hope to sequentially process its sudden arrival and react to it with the necessary punctual accordance.

-A Goddamn Kadabra teleported in right out of nowhere, just six meters further west over the rise, plopping those forked toes of his on a higher elevation than us.

My whole body was already buzzing with the Kadabra's primary EM charge when my hand shot to the Heavy Ball on my belt.

"DAMASCUS-!"

 _-Nope_. That Kadabra wasn't letting me call up my fucking Rock-Snake for a tussle. His fucking ESP had already identified the biggest threat in this posse of meatwads.

It wasn't the startled Bulbasaur.

It wasn't the roaring Growlithe.

-It was the fucking handsome Ranger, calming his jarred commander nerves with the happy thoughts of a _Surprise-Onix-To-Your-Face-Bitch_.

The weirdest Goddamn physical sensation tingled across my entire frame when the Kadabra's reverse polarity EMP threw my ass over the rise and straight off a cliff.

Before my feet had even left the ground, I had already developed whiplash in my every joint, and I was suffering from a crackling ache in my every muscle.

But that shitty experience was absolutely nothing compare to the little nerve-jangling that I received when I hit the limestone floor headfirst after a plummet of twelve meters.

-Psions.

They like hitting you hardest when you're mentally compromised.

That Kadabra could have been stalking us ever since we'd first left Cerulean Prime Outpost enroute to the White Warrens, keeping tabs on us with his ESP from well outside Cortez's olfactory sphere of awareness; just waiting for me to drop my mental guard before he pounced on his evening feast.

 _-I fucking hate psions…_

…

Don't ask me how I lived through that. By rights, I should be stone cold dead after that fall. My spine should have gone straight through the top of my skull when my dome slammed into the rocks.

-But my sweet little Vauban somehow got one her vines around my falling body…

...Aw, _fuck_...

...God, I still feel so guilty for what I put her through after that…

…

" _-Oh my God. I'm gonna kill that Walkout Comm Operator. Just you wait. When I find that dumbass, I'm gonna skin him fucking alive."_

" _Oh fuck… Don't tell me that we're locked out…"_

" _Yep. The gate's security program tripped on the fourth failed input. Looks like we're spending the rest of the night in the Hades's Swath."_

" _Oh shit…"_

" _Tell me about it. I did not want to be eating MREs for breakfast. I'm gonna kill that fucking Comm Operator-"_

" _Fuck breakfast, man! We're five-hundred meters away from the Viridian Frontier! We're something else's breakfast-!"_

" _Well... We will be something else's breakfast if you keep shouting like a fucking idiot, Carlos."_

" _We're fucked! We're so fuck-?!"_

" _..."_

" _...!"_

" _You done screaming yet? Or do I have to sit on your mouth all night long, Carlos?"_

" _...What are we going to do?"_

" _What are we going to do? Well, you're gonna calm the fuck down. Then I'm gonna cook me up some of the Ranger's 'finest' enchiladas. And then I'm gonna take the first watch while both you and Riot sleep off whatever foul shit you two ate."_

" _...You're serious?"_

" _What good would panicking do for me right now, Carlos?"_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...Zane?"_

" _Goddamnit, Carlos. I really don't like that gooey tone of yours."_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _-Were you going to ask me something? Cause this awkward silence is pissing me the fuck off even more than your puppy-dog-eyed pleading."_

" _...Umm… Zane? Why did you become a Ranger?"_

" _Cause the Beret fits my dick like a glove."_

" _...!?"_

" _..."_

" _...Heh-Ha-Hah... No, I'm totally being serious, Zane."_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...You really wanna know why?"_

" _I did ask, didn't I?"_

" _You already know why, Carlos. For fuck's sake, everybody at Viridian Prime knows why."_

" _...Yeah… But it's not just for the Black Beret, is it?"_

" _..."_

" _...?"_

" _..."_

" _...Uh oh."_

" _-What?"_

" _Is the Fucking Bastard having one of his deep moments?"_

" _I dunno. Does Carlos want to move our camp over to the treeline?"_

" _Come on, Zane. I know you aren't a Fucking Bastard all of the time."_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...Something personal?"_

" _Carlos, I really don't like it when people try digging into me."_

" _Dude, I just want to know what makes you tick. You act like the Rangers are the only thing that matters to you-"_

" _They are."_

" _...What about your family?"_

" _Don't even fucking go there. My family kicked me out for being who I wanted to be. The Rangers took me in and gave me the means to be who I wanted to be. Fuck my family. The Rangers are my family."_

" _...So is that why you push yourself so hard?"_

" _...Quit digging, Carlos. Last warning."_

" _...Okay..."_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...So what about you?"_

" _...What do you mean?"_

" _Why did a dumbass like you put on a Beret? And why the fuck did a pussy sign up with the Infantry?"_

" _Heh… Well… Honestly?"_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...I'm waiting…"_

" _...It was because of my family."_

" _You mean they put your ass on the curb too?"_

" _No! Well, no… Not really. Actually, not at all. I just… I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life."_

" _..."_

" _...You see, my madre and padre aren't exactly… The wealthiest of parents. And they have nine kids to feed-"_

" _Holy fuck! Condoms were invented to prevent mistakes like you from happening!"_

" _Fuck you, Zane! Fuck man, I was spilling my guts out to you, and you had to say something like that!?"_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...I'm sorry, Carlos… I didn't mean it like that-"_

" _Did you really just say that you're sorry?"_

" _...?"_

" _..."_

" _-Ah, fuck you! You conniving little bitch! You were just acting offended, weren't you!?"_

" _...Maybe?"_

" _That's it. Get up. We're moving our camp over to the treeline."_

" _Oh come on!"_

" _Are you done fucking with me, Carlos?"_

" _Dude, I just-!"_

" _You do know that I'm just fucking with you, right?"_

" _...!"_

" _..."_

" _...Fuck you, Zane..."_

" _Ahem."_

" _...?"_

" _...Nine kids?"_

" _...Well, fuck it. Yeah. There's nine of us. I'm the third oldest, and the biggest disappointment."_

" _Shit. And I thought that I was the only one."_

" _...It's not like that. My ma and pa worked themselves to the bone just to put me through school, and I barely managed to graduate. They kicked my ass to do the best that I could, but… I was a stupid kid who just wanted to fuck around..."_

" _Honesty is such a bitch, isn't it?"_

" _Are you allergic to sympathy, Bastard?"_

" _No. I just prefer my sympathy with milk and cookies."_

" _Madre de dios… Holy shit, Zane. Anyways… I fucked up, and I ended up sitting on my ass in my parents' house with absolutely nothing planned for my life after graduation. Basically, I was just mooching off my ma and pa when they were already strapped for cash caring after my younger siblings. And I was… Wearing out my welcome, still fucking around like a kid in school..."_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...So what happened?"_

" _...Well… It's gonna sound sappy…"_

" _This is already sappy. So make me some fucking syrup."_

" _Usted puhta… Fine. Long story short? My dad took me out on a walk."_

" _...Wow. What a shitty short story."_

" _-We talked, man. We just talked. My pa told me about his childhood. He told me that he fucked up just like I did. He told me that he spent his entire life trying to fix that one fuck up…"_

" _..."_

" _...He told me that he and my ma only pushed themselves and us so hard because they didn't want their kids to fuck up like they had…"_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...I'm sorry, Carlos…"_

" _Well don't be. It opened my eyes. I knew that I had to do something, but my piss-poor diploma wasn't going to open up all that many doors-"_

" _So you joined the Rangers?"_

" _...Basically, yeah. It was the best paying job that I could get, and some of the G.I. bill's benefits even extends to my siblings, so…"_

" _...So you maximized the benefits by jumping on the frontlines to help your old man out, huh?"_

" _...I'm doing the best that I can. Family comes first, you know? Heh… It's… It's kind of funny, actually… In a sad way..."_

" _...?"_

" _...You see, my pa thinks that he fucked up..."_

" _..."_

" _...But he did alright by me, and I want to make him proud…"_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...I wish that I could say the same about my old man…"_

" _...?"_

" _..."_

" _I'm not going to dig, Bastard."_

" _Heh… Fair enough."_

" _..."_

" _...I haven't talked to my dad for the past three years. I tried calling my mother two weeks ago… But I should've known better…"_

" _...What happened to your ma?"_

" _...Dad doesn't want me talking to her… He's pretty high up in Silph's hierarchy… So… It ain't too hard for him to keep me from talking to her…"_

" _...He's rich?"_

" _...Yeah. You see… I… I had a pretty cozy life back then, before I swore my oath. I had… My dad had a future planned for me, and I… I had the credentials to fulfill it…"_

" _..."_

" _...But I didn't want to be like my dad… I had a… a dream. A stupid, childish dream. I wanted a Black Beret… Way back then… I thought that it was just a fancy hat worn by badasses who rode their Gyaradosia to work… I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know what I would have to do in order to earn one… But if I had known… Then I wouldn't have wanted a Black Beret..."_

" _...So what changed?"_

" _My dad… Heh… He sent me for a walk. He told me about his past before he kicked me out the door. He told that he worked his ass off to build a fucking empire for me… An empire that I would have inherited if I would've just followed in his footsteps… He told me that I stabbed him in the back when I swore my oath. Told me that the mon were gonna kill me, and that his empire was gonna fail without his heir. Told me that I had just wasted his entire life… Told me that I was the biggest fuck up of his life… Told me to never come back. Told me that I didn't have a home anymore..."_

" _..."_

" _...He told me that he didn't have a son anymore…"_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...Oh my God, Zane…"_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...So, long story short? The Rangers became my family. The Rangers became my home... And I'm gonna get that Black Beret, just to make my family proud."_

" _...And your dad?"_

" _Fuck him. I wouldn't shed a single fucking tear for him if he croaked tomorrow. Hell, I could talk to my mother again if he did, so fuck his ass."_

" _...You really miss your ma, then?"_

" _...Yeah… She… tried talking my dad down… She tried to get out of his arms just to hold me again… The last thing I heard from her before he slammed the door in my face was that I'd always have a home…"_

" _..."_

" _...That I'd always have a mother…"_

" _..."_

" _...That I'd always have a father…"_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...Zane-?"_

" _Don't say a fucking thing, Carlos. I don't want sympathy. I don't want to remember…"_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...If your pa opened the door to you again… What would you do?"_

" _Beat the fucking piss out of him."_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...Could you ever forgive him?"_

" _No. He can have his fucking empire. For all the love it gives him, he can have it all to himself. I just want to hold my mother again…"_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...The bell tolls, Carlos. Vauban and I will watch your back. We'll wake you and Riot for the second watch."_

" _...Yes sir."_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _Zane? I just wanted to say-"_

" _Don't. I'm already regretting letting my mouth run. Just go to sleep. And forget all about this, cause that is exactly what I'm gonna do. Never speak a word of this to anyone, Carlos. Not a word. Do you hear me?"_

" _...Yes sir. I can take first watch if-"_

" _I said, 'The bell tolls,' Ranger. Close your fucking eyes and shut your fucking mouth. I said that I've got your back. That means go to bed. Now."_

" _...Okay."_

" _..."_

" _..."_

" _...Carlos-?"_

" _..."_

" _-Wow. That was fast…"_

" _..."_

" _...Come here, Vauban…"_

…

- _What a shitty fucking dream._

The first thing that I noticed when I came to was the pain.

I honestly thought that Damascus had shafted my ass again, I was feeling that terrible.

But then the pain reminded me that I was alive.

And that triggered a little bit of recall.

 _What had tried to kill me-?_

-Oh yeah.

The fucking Kadabra.

Then something bumped into me.

"...Vauban-?"

-I thought I recognised that wheeze...

I forced my noncompliant eyes wide open, and suppressed the agony of my screaming spine as I shot straight the fuck up, my right hand going for Doug's knife.

 _That fucking Kadabra-_

-Was nowhere in sight.

I was on the lower crags of the White Warrens. It was well after dusk, and dawn was still far in the rising. High tide had already come and gone, and the shore's pebbled edge was slowly creeping out.

And my little girl-

- _What the fuck was wrong with my little girl?!_

"VAUBAN!" Fuck the rules of the Frontier. I screamed her name at the top of my range. I could barely tell that _thing_ was my little girl-

- _But I could see her pissed off bulb quivering above the mass of writhing white roots, and I could hear her moaning in pain underneath it all._

…

Grass-Types.

They come in two varieties.

One, the weird Chloroplisms.

Two, the fucking creepy Symbiotes.

Chloroplisms are plants. Obviously.

They're just a bit different from the vegetative organisms that evolved on earth.

Different, as in; _almost every possible way conceivable._

The Chloroplism's cells have several distinct similarities in both structure and function to earth's indigenous plant cell template. Rather than the terran-indigenous plant cell's typical cellulose cellular wall, Chloroplisms opted for the fungi's choice of chitin for additional durability. The average size of their vacuoles are three times the average size of a normal plant cell's vacuole, which is necessary for locomotion, seeing as the Chloroplism's motor functions operate mostly via cellular hydraulics…

And every single one of their Plasmodesmata are interconnected with a mitochondrion, which effectively serves as something of a complex nervous system…

- _Between every single cell._

Yep.

Who knew that such a crude design had the potential to serve as the single most extensive neural highway thus far discovered in a living organism?

Every single cell in a Chloroplism is connected to the exact same neural network. Chloroplisms don't have brains, because they don't need them. Not when every single cell in their body is operating on the exact same frequency. This allows Chloroplisms to mount incredibly rapid immunity responses to infections, permits for more efficient cellular material exchange, aids in the coordination of erratic and spontaneous cellular divisions, allows for a ridiculously accurate cellular triage; and a Chloroplism's neural network handles all of this, plus operating the organism's standard motor-reactions; for an iota of the cellular energy exchange generally associated with a complex multicellular animal's nervous system.

There are of course, certain drawbacks to this neural network design. Chloroplisms do not possess any form of non-inherited behaviors; simply because such an extensive, yet crude, nervous system cannot tolerate overly complex neural transmissions. You can still train a Chloroplism, of that you can have no doubt…

...But it involves a Trainer learning how to incite a Chloroplism's inherent behaviors in a series of patterns that translates into complex behaviors, which necessitates far more attention to detail from the Trainer than is normally required when training mon. Chloroplism Trainers don't exactly train their mon in the traditional sense. Instead, Chloroplism Trainers literally have to instruct their mon in accordance to Ivan Pavlov's bell ringing recitals.

That said, inciting certain behaviors in Chloroplisms is pretty easy.

Want to see a Vileplume attack another mon?

Then just make the Vileplume feel threatened, and point it in direction of the mon that you want dead.

Other than the obvious poking-your-flower-with-a-stick method, certain botany techniques have also proven effective in the training of Chloroplisms. Everything from ambient UV exposure, calculated nutrient dosage, establishing a strict routine of watering times, and even fucking bonsai can alter a Chloroplism's inherent behavioral reaction patterns; meaning that the more specific instructions you divulge to your flower-mon through "environmental brainwashing," generally the better tailored that flower-mon will be for a distinct role.

Most Chloroplisms are toxic in one fashion or another, seeing as they'd make for easy meals otherwise. The Chloroplisms that aren't toxic, are generally covered in motion sensing trichomes from canopy to root; and the non-toxic variants are almost always equipped with some seriously nasty hydraulic-cell-structured constriction vines.

Those vines can exert pressures capable of crushing granite blocks into rubble, and some can even apply sufficient force to bend girders into coils. It all depends on the size of the vines in question, and the amount of water available within the Chloroplism's cell vacuoles.

-And then we have the Symbiotes.

Which, as far as altruistic parasitic relationships go, isn't so bad.

It's just kind of creepy.

Symbiotes are a union of at least two separate organisms from two different Kingdoms; both of which have evolved to serve as the union's respective hosts, or the union's respective parasites.

Essentially, it's what happens after a predatory Chloroplism develops a taste for a certain species of mon, and then evolves to 'infect' that specific mon species for a more efficient exchange.

Does this sound creepy yet?

Just wondering, 'cause my skin is already crawling.

Yep, some carnivorous Chloroplisms have evolved not only to bait and snare prey, but to infect them as well. Most mon species that develop a genetic tolerance for these parasitic Chloroplism infections eventually evolve into a Symbiote species.

Vauban is a Symbiote. According to the mon fossil record, the Bulbasaur species did not originally have a bulb growing out of their spinal column. The proto-Bulbasaurs and their evolved states were just fat grazing lizards; whose only real defense against their natural predators was a thick layer of protective blubber, and a wicked set of unfurling tusks in their segmented jaws.

In other words, proto-Bulbasaurs were nothing special in the world of mon; other than choice cuts of meat with all that calorie rich fat in them.

That changed completely when a parasitic Chloroplism's infection of the proto-Bulbasaurs resulted in a symbiotic relationship.

You see, evolution is one smart fucking biological engine.

The proto-Bulbasaur's parasitic Chloroplism rather enjoyed having a host that could provide a mobile source of nutrition while sharing a similar penchant for sunlight. That particular Chloroplism adored its reptilian host so much, that it decided to take their parasitic relationship to the next level. Instead of killing its proto-Bulbasaur host off in the act of Chloroplism reproduction, which is a fairly typical function in the parasitic Chloroplism world; this Chloroplism decided that it would rather 'link' its reproductive organs with the host's reproductive organs. And the newly formed reproduction system began to mass produce a joint-project mon. A new species of mon, that would be born with a foreign organism taxonomically dissimilar from itself already growing out of its body.

-Okay.

Give me a moment…

...Cause I just gave myself the heebie-jeebies.

The bulb on Vauban's back isn't actually an organ belonging to the reptilian mon underneath it.

It's a completely separate organism, from a completely separate Kingdom, sponging its required nutriment right out from the blood and spinal fluids of the cute little lizard that lives beneath it.

The parasitic Chloroplism stands to gain quite a bit in this relationship. Such as; a reliable and steady supply of nutrients, a brain that was formerly missing in its nervous system's design, a mobile flowerpot that can ferry it out of the shadows and into the sunlight, additional surface area for its chloroplasts to soak solar rays via the host's dermis, and an extra set of teeth to use in a fight.

So what does the host gain?

That should be pretty fucking obvious.

The host gains an alternative means of energy production, thanks to the photosynthesis of its parasitic Chloroplism; a new sensory and immunity platform, thanks to the Chloroplism's bizarre yet highly effective nervous system…

...And a whole new arsenal of nasty funk that generally isn't found in the Animal Kingdom.

Predatory mon don't find the neo-Bulbasaur's tasty fat reserves quite as delicious as they did the proto-Bulbasaur's blubber; seeing as there is now a lethally toxic enzyme mingling within the Bulbasaur species's protein structures.

And not many predators favor fighting a mon that can paralyze them with an anesthetic pollen, before said mon begins taking chunks out of that predator's numb ass with those scary fucking Bulbasaur teeth.

The proto-Bulbasaurs were exclusively herbivores in their diets.

That all started changing when the proto-Bulbasaurs became Symbiotes, and they gained the evolutionary means to kill and eat the mon that had previously killed and eaten them.

…

"VAUBAN!" My knife was drawn in that shattered breath. Something was attacking my girl. Something was hurting my Vauban. I was gonna kill whatever the fuck-

My knife came up short when I heard Vauban squeal.

I could see her now.

Her red eyes were looking up at me, all fearful and desperate…

And I could only stand by, frozen in place, as my panic-stricken brain worked out the situation.

"Oh hell no, Vauban…"

My little girl struggled to poke her tiny head through the roots, even as they punished her for trying to move. She actually looked apologetic…

"...Not now… Not here…" There were tears in my eyes again. At any other time, I'd be overjoyed to see this.

Vauban squealed again, and those white roots drowned out her face when they grappled with the little Bulbasaur trying to escape them. I had force myself to remain calm, and refrain from assisting Vauban. Agitating that bulb would only make things even worse.

"Why?! Why here?! Why now?!" I was screaming to no one and nothing in particular. This just wasn't right. This just wasn't fair.

Vauban was starting her evolution cycle. My little girl was growing up into an Ivysaur.

-Which was anything but good news.

Bulbasaurs, being Symbiotes, are pretty fucking picky about the kind of environment that will support their evolution cycles. Or more specifically, their fucking bulbs are.

Due to their inherently unstable symbiotic relationship, Symbiotes require extensive preparation before the turn in their evolution cycles. For the reptilian Bulbasaurs in particular, the Bulbasaur needs one heavy fat reserve for sustained torpor; and rich loamy soil with plenty of exposure to water and sunlight for the bulb.

In a perfect world, I would have planted Vauban's pudgy ass in a greenhouse for her week-long evolution cycle. In a perfect world, I would have taken notice of the signs my little girl was giving off. In a perfect world, I would have correlated Vauban's sudden weight gain and her increased anxiety as those Bulbasaur hormones played havoc with her disposition.

In a perfect world, I would have been prepared for Vauban's evolution.

But in the real world…

My ignorance and negligence was going to kill my little girl.

"DAMASCUS, REPORT!"

Fuck the Frontier. Fuck my own reservations of risking the Parasect for a nocturnal trip to Cerulean.

Fuck this fucking two-faced place.

This was an emergency.

Vauban's bulb had started its evolution cycle in time with lizard that shared a genetically encoded symbiotic relationship with it. The problem was that my Vauban wasn't ready for her evolution, even if her bulb decided that it was time to start growing up without her. The means to guarantee Vauban a secure evolution into an Ivysaur had been denied to both the dinosaur and the bulb.

And despite being a mindless plant…

 _-Vauban's bulb knew that it was in trouble._

The Chloroplism that had been conceived and birthed within my little girl was starving.

 _-And it was trying to separate itself from its lifelong host._

Vauban's bulb was rejecting her.

And if it managed to pull itself out of her spinal column…

 _-My little girl was dead._

Damascus hadn't even fully configured to his physiological parameters when I risked my own life to pick up Vauban and her angsty bulb. That stupid plant was dying of hunger, and it didn't have the brainpower to realize that we could feed it if it would only be patient. Vauban's bulb was trying to separate itself from her, and seek out a new host for infection. That Bulbasaur-specialized Chloroplism was beginning to regress into its old parasitic programming. Fortunately for me, my olive green BDU was made from synthetic materials; so Vauban's bulb didn't taste a host when I cradled her writhing cage against my sternum.

In these circumstances, transporting Vauban in her Pokeball could be lethal if I tried to recall her. Due to the onset of evolution, the Pokeball's physiological diagnostics wouldn't recognise a Bulbasaur when the dematerializing beam hit Vauban. The Pokeball would process something entirely different, and whatever was recalled into the Pokeball's immaterial storage unit would not enter whole. In other words, it would be forced symbiotic separation by computerized dematerialization. Either Vauban or her bulb would be sucked into her Pokeball, which would kill my little girl in the process.

It felt like a no-win situation.

 _-But this was just another day in the Ranger Corps for the Fucking Bastard and his little girl._

"Damascus!"

I have no prayers for you, snake…

- _You had better fucking remember who I am._

"Damascus, we need a lift! Southwest! Cerulean! Make it fast!" That was the voice of a desperate Ranger. A voice that Damascus was well familiar with. My addled Onix could still put two and two together.

- _Do what I say when I say it, or else someone is gonna die._

Damascus didn't waste a second of my life. My snake lowered himself without so much as a grumble. I pulled myself up unto Damascus's third neck bead, and stripped off my coat to swaddle Vauban's probing roots with it. As long as Vauban's bulb thought that it was imprisoned, it would slow down the separation process. Unlike most living creatures, Chloroplisms don't struggle when they're restrained. They'll wait to see if whatever is smothering them cuts them loose, before fighting for their freedom. Chloropisms are all about resource management. As long as I could convince Vauban's bulb that it was in no immediate danger, I could forestall the Symbiote's dissolution. As it was, the synthetic fibers of my uniform could keep Vauban's bulb contained without harming it, until the hunger made her bulb truly desperate.

Damascus hadn't even covered sixty meters when my mind snapped with a new dilemma.

"Where the hell is Cortez?!"

 _-Where the hell was my dog?!_

Damascus shifted his mass on a pivot, never losing momentum as his entire form curved northwards. I struggled to grip my smooth-sided snake with my thighs, even as my arms wrestled with the thrashing Bulbasaur in my disrobed coat.

I was rifling through my kit for a torch when Damascus let loose a rumble. Onix can't smell, but they can pick up magnetic and electrical charges exceptionally well. Damascus's magnetic sense had picked up a life form's bioelectric signature, not far from the rise that the Kadabra had thrown me off. While my snake pulled us precariously up the escarpment, I lit up my mag-light and shot the LED beam into the thick darkness.

"CORTEZ! CORTEZ, WHERE ARE YOU!?"

Vauban didn't have time for this. It might already be too late to save her. Those roots weren't suppose to come out of her body, period the end. Even so, I wasn't leaving Cortez behind. But if that Kadabra had killed my dog-

"CORTEZ!"

- _That Kadabra better not have killed my dog._

My heart went straight into my throat when Damascus ascended the limestone rise, and my torch's light fell onto a graphic scene. There was Cortez, not far from where we had been ambushed by the Kadabra.

Laying on his side.

In a puddle of blood.

 _There was fucking blood everywhere._

"CORTEZ!" I damn near dropped Vauban when I lept from Damascus's neck.

Cortez didn't respond as I trucked it over to the ruin.

"Ohgawd…"

 _-My dog…_

"-Cortez?"

I couldn't believe it...

 _-Cortez had torn the fucking Kadabra into bits._

The biggest piece of the Kadabra that my torch could find was his bushy tail.

-After that grisly scrap, second place went to the severed joints of a toe.

Everything else was in bloody shreds.

-And my dog…

"Cortez! Respond!" I had my hand on that Growlithe's neck, searching for a pulse beneath his jaw.

Cortez's teeth told me that there was a lot more than just a pulse kicking around in my dog.

Those fucking canines of his sank right into my bare wrist.

 _-I couldn't have been any more overjoyed._

" _-Ohgawd_."

I was casting Vauban's precious seconds to the wind, just to cradle my wounded dog's head. Cortez was hurt, and how bad I couldn't tell.

But he was alive.

Alive and still fighting.

"It's okay, Cortez… I'll get you help… Come on boy, let me go!" Those teeth were doing some serious damage to my forearm, and my panicking dog quickly released my wrist.

"It's okay, just hold on! I'm putting you in your ball! You'll be, fine Cortez, you'll be fine!" One quick medical examination of my pooch told me most of what I needed to know.

The vast majority of blood soaking into Cortez's fur wasn't seeping from his wounds.

Most of that blood belonged to a dismembered Kadabra.

 _-That psion had fucked with the wrong Growlithe._

Cortez was recalled into his Pokeball, and the device's internal biological diagnostics pinged my hound as unfit for duress.

Yet the Pokeball failed to alert me to a terminal condition plaguing Cortez. He was beat to shit and likely disoriented from both his wounds and the Kadabra's EMP nerve attacks, but my dog would live.

-But I wasn't granted any such reassurances regarding my screaming girl. Vauban was in bad shape, and her condition was obviously deteriorating. If that bulb managed to pull itself free of her spine, its next act would be to turn the paralysed Bulbasaur into its first emancipated meal.

I had absolutely no time left for dawdling. I wasn't letting my Vauban die. My ass was back on Damascus's neck, my voice was screaming, 'south post-haste,' and my swaddled little girl was squealing from her cradle in my arms. No contact I could offer would bring any comfort to my Vauban. She was in too much pain to be aware of much anything else, even my soothing voice.

I sure as hell wasn't gonna let Vauban die, and it seemed that Damascus shared my desperate sentiment.

Many people familiar with Mineral-mon make the mistake of assuming that they're all just bulky, cumbersome, graceless, dumb beasts.

Many people who are familiar with Mineral-mon have never seen an Onix moving at full tilt before.

As far as Rock-types are concerned, the Onixia species are the cruisers of the Mineral-mon world. Despite their established status as one of the largest and heaviest of mon recognized by science, Onixia are not slow creatures. Nor are they inelegant, or mindlessly stupid. Due in no small part to the Onixia's massive scale and their serpentine physiology, the Onixia species can quickly cover vast quantities of ground with some of the eeriest movements ever beheld by human eyes. An Onix basically is a giant living chain of stoney beads that mimics the locomotions of a snake, which makes for one bizarre spectacle by itself; but when you combine the species' signature lashing slither along with the Onixia's rock hard carapace and their incredible momentum…

-And not only can the Onixia move rather quickly, but deviation is rarely required from their intended course, seeing as the Onixia have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about crushing anything unfortunate enough to stand in their way.

Needless to say, Damascus _carved_ his way south through all that Cerulean limestone, and when the treacherous foliage of Kanto's northernmost coastal jungle dared present itself as an obstacle to my snake…

...Well, Damascus just pulped the fuck out of the jungle too.

Thanks to the Kadabra's EMP blasts that had fried my person and everything on it, my damaged G.I. radio couldn't even transmit a hail for aid to the Cerulean Rangers; and we were so far off the beaten path that Alexandria's broadcasts couldn't locate a receiver to relay our distress. My mind was racing as I dissected our options, grinding over the set of circumstances and their predictable outcomes. It didn't take me too terribly long to realize that the Cerulean Rangers couldn't do a _beneficial_ thing for Vauban. Her condition was not only lethal for her, but if that bulb gained full dictation over its own nervous system…

...Then we wouldn't be operating on a Bulbasaur anymore. We would be attempting to perform surgery on a Waterloo Saboteur's self aware arsenal. An arsenal that would likely identify the invasive scalpels, suction, and clamps as a hostile intent. Vauban's bulb was essentially a sentient bomb now. One untimely or misplaced snip could set off a minor dispersal which would kill anything exposed to it with some of the most horrifying pathogenic reactions that can be suffered upon a living body.

The Cerulean Rangers did not have the equipment, expertise, or inclination required to warrant the risk of operating on my little girl. If the Rangers caught wind of a Saboteur Class Bulbasaur undergoing symbiotic separation, their first act would be to appropriate the malfunctioning unit, and then carbonize the faulty Saboteur unit in a hermetically sealed oven.

Vauban would still be be breathing when the Rangers punched in the incinerator's four-digit temperature and warmed up the vacuum cycle. This charring tactic was our standard procedure for disposing of the Pollutants. This was the Rangers' safest method of exterminating all manner of biological threats. Just keep subjecting the specimen to extreme heat in an atmosphere devoid of oxygen for an extended duration; until nothing is left, save for some crispy flakes and a small mound of ashes. The Rangers regularly made charcoal briquettes out of Muks and Wheezings using this tactic, before incarcerating the caustic remains within lead-lined barrels for an indefinite period at designated hazardous waste storage facilities.

...So in other words?

 _-Fuck the Rangers._ There was no way in hell that I was condemning my little girl to a premortem cremation. But if I couldn't rely on the Rangers to save my Vauban…

"-Damascus, slow down! That's Nugget Bridge!"

 _-Then I was gonna have to turn to the private sector._

I really don't remember how long Damascus was wreaking havoc out on the Frontier, nor did I particularly notice at the time; but it wasn't until my Rock-Snake haphazardly scaled Wrecker Cape's Route Wall that I finally snapped out of my stupor. We were travelling downhill fast, only klicks away from Cerulean's fortified northern mining bridge. It was well after midnight, and our unexpected return to Cerulean City was coinciding with a late shift of Cerulean miners on their peaceful trek home.

Every one of the grimy hardhats were startled shitless when a giant fucking Onix came straight out of nowhere and barreled it past them on an intercept with Nugget Bridge. This was a fairly unusual event. Normally, miners are more accustomed to encountering the rare Onixia a solid klick below ground, inconveniently coiled up on a desirable ore deposit.

Onixia very rarely come above the earth's crust, so you don't expect to see an Onix tearing up the surface world in a mad dash for civilization. To those poor miner's eyes, Damascus must have looked like a living battering ram, moving at livid speed on a beeline trajectory towards their homes. In hindsight, I can't blame the miners for trying to stop us.

But Damascus and I sure as hell weren't gonna let them.

I didn't even see the sign stating the weight limit of Nugget Bridge. For all I knew, Damascus could have actually exceeded Nugget Bridge's designated gross restriction. But even so, I didn't particularly care.

We had a small army of deep digging Excadrills and boulder hauling Machokes gearing up for a brawl and hot on our tails; all backed by a desperate mob of pick-wielding miners. I was screaming, 'Godspeed,' at the top of my lungs when Damascus rammed his way through Nugget Bridge's southern crossbuck gates. Some of the miners must have holocasted ahead to the Cerulean authorities, 'cause it wasn't long after we breached Nugget bridge that we heard shrill sirens blaring in distance and saw the flashing lights gathering ahead to greet us as Damascus and I approached Cerulean City's northern wall.

The alarm had been raised. Everybody in Cerulean City thought that a pissed off Onix was coming in hot to lay waste to their homes. So you can imagine the awestruck looks I received when Damascus came to a sudden halt before the City Guard's frontline of men and mon, and a Ranger cradling a thrashing coat leapt from the neck of his Onix, before recalling the gargantuan rock-snake back into a Heavy Ball. I didn't even bother explaining myself to the stunned City Guard forming a defensive perimeter around Cerulean City's northern gate. I just shouted my intentions out loud-n'-clear, before shouldering it past the dumbstruck fucks still barring my way.

"This is a Ranger Corps emergency! Step aside!"

The City Guard was too flummoxed with this strange turn of events to waylay my passage. I was in Cerulean's downtown before they could even get my identity. As I would later find out, if it wasn't for the Arbok situation in the Prague; I might have had to tussle with some Blackhats before gaining access to Cerulean City. But my addled mind couldn't find the drive to waste processing power on such trivial conveniences.

My desperate brain could only think of one thing.

 _-Saving my little girl._

I hadn't the cognition to spare for contemplating the repercussions of my unannounced Onixia incursion. But as it stood, the people of Cerulean were so relieved to discover that they weren't gonna have to defend their city from a rampaging Damascus, that they didn't even bother to get in my way and slow me down. Their gratitude was prolific enough for them to warrant leaving me the fuck alone as I kicked in Cerulean City's head-branch Pokemon Center doors.

"Doc! Doc! Get me a fucking Doctor ASAP!" I screamed as I hoofed it to the Pokemon Center's front counter.

-Hello nurse, so much for your good morning.

"What's wrong?!"

-I'll give the pink haired candy stripe props for responding to my crude greeting with urgency.

"I've got a G.I. Bulbasaur undergoing symbiotic separation! I need a botanical surgeon fast!"

In hindsight…

...I should have left out Vauban's G.I. status.

"A military Bulbasaur?! Isn't that a Saboteur Class?"

Well, nurse pink hair? Go ahead and color me impressed. You actually paid attention in med school.

"Affirmative! Hence the GET ME A FUCKING SURGEON NOW!"

-I was panicking too much to realize how deep a grave I was digging for my Vauban…

The nurse's face clouded over, but she punched in a three digit number on her desk phone lickety-split.

"Transfer me to the Botanical Department…"

"..."

"Doctor Emmets? This is Joy at the front kiosk. A Ranger just brought in a G.I. Bulbasaur Saboteur Class undergoing symbiotic separation."

"..."

"That's what I thought. Okay. I'll tell him." Nurse Joy covered the phone's mouthpiece with palm, before turning to me with a nervous look in her eye.

"We can't operate on your Bulbasaur, Ranger-"

-That phone was out of her hands and at my ear and mouth before nurse Joy could even finish her statement.

"WHY THE FUCK NOT?!" I roared into the mouthpiece.

"Goddamnit, this is a Pokemon Center! Don't shout in the lobby-"

" _Listen to me,_ Doctor Fuck-its, I'LL FUCKING YELL WHEREVER THE FUCK I WANT TO, WHENEVER THE SHIT HITS THE FAN! NOW GET A ROOM PREPPED FOR SURGERY, BECAUSE YOU _ARE_ OPERATING ON MY VAUBAN IMMEDIATELY!"

-Don't fuck with a desperate Ranger.

Bad things happen to those who dare defy that sage advice.

"Ranger, you need to calm down! I can't legally operate on a Saboteur Class! Our insurance doesn't cover militarized mon mishaps! If your Saboteur detonates within the Pokemon Center, or God forbid, anywhere near Cerulean; It's going to kill countless civilians! We can't take the risk!" Doctor Fuck-its informed me. My whole body went cold when I realized…

 _-That Doctor Fuck-its was right on the money._

"-Doc… You gotta do something… She's dying! My little girl is dying!" I was fucking begging, and everyone in the lobby could see it. Vauban was thrashing in my arms as the seizures began to take hold. Once that bulb broke her spinal column…

-It would be too late to save my little girl.

"...How advanced is her condition?" Doctor Fuck-its cautiously asked on his end.

"She entered shock just an hour ago! The roots are still coming out! We can save her if we act now!" A ray of hope was reflected in my voice, but Doctor Fuck-its wasn't going to be the one to save my little girl…

"I can't operate on a Saboteur Class, Ranger. I just can't. But-"

-Oh that 'but' of yours saved your ass from having me call up Damascus and ordering him to lay waste to this fucked-up medical facility.

"-But there's a botanical specialist in Cerulean. She quit working here about a week ago. She's a civilian who runs the graveyard shift in the Azure precinct's Pokemart. She knows her material hardcore, but I don't think that she has access to the facilities required for an operation-"

"What about Saffron?! What about Celedon?! Give me some options here!" I shouted. I didn't care if this broad was the best botanical surgeon in the world! If she didn't have access to an operating room-

"Your Bulbasaur would never last the duration of the trip! And they would never let an unstable Saboteur Class on the shuttle anyways-"

"What about air-transit?! What about Aviation?! Wouldn't that be-"

"Oh yeah, that's a great idea! Let's put a malfunctioning Saboteur unit in high altitude! Are you fucking kidding me?! Your Bulbasaur's dispersal could affect the entire east coast if she detonated on high! That lethal cloud could cover hundreds of kilometers from up there-"

"WELL, WHAT THE FUCK ELSE CAN WE DO?!" I roared over the sensible Doctor in my desperation. I should have known better than to ask.

"We have an incinerator on the premises. Other than the girl I mentioned earlier, that's our only other option."

Doctor Fuck-its really needed to work on his bedside manner. If that phone had been his throat, my reflexes would have crushed his fucking larynx like a grape. As it stood, I just snapped the phone in half with one hand.

"Oh my God!" Nurse Joy wasn't accustomed to seeing her office staples reduced to shrapnel. I put Vauban on the counter just so I could use both hands to hold the two broken ends of the phone together.

"This girl… The Azure precinct you said?" I growled to Doctor Fuck-its. I could barely hear his voice over the ruined phone.

"Her name is Gwyn. I can't remember her last name. She has some… emotional issues that might have played a part in her… employment termination at this Pokemon Center, but she's the best damn botanical surgeon that you're ever going to find in Indigo."

"Is she working at the Pokemart right now?" I asked, trying to calm myself.

"I don't know her weekly schedule, or even if she is working there anymore, but either way… You're gonna have to go through the Ranger Corps' High Command in order to authorize a civilian's medical operation on a Mil-Spec mon-"

"Well guess what? I'm a fucking Special Operative in the Ranger Corps. That red tape doesn't hold me back. Do you have access to a terminal with a secure link to the Ranger's network?" I found a cold steel in my gut, and presented it to Doctor Fuck-its as my voice.

"Affirmative. I'm accessing the Ranger Corps' medical records now… I'm gonna need your service tag-"

"Chief Warrant Officer Zane Bastard. Whiskey-Dash-Two-One-One-Zero-Five-Seven-Three. Saboteur Class, designation: Uniform-Zero-One-Four. Codename: Vauban. Serial Code: Open-Brackets, Two-One, Close-Brackets; Nine-Zero-Zero-Two-One-Seven-Five-Dash-Two." I related the necessary information before Doctor Fuck-its could even finish requesting it. I knew damn well what was required to access the Ranger net's medical record database. Every Special Operative did.

"...I have access to Vauban's medical manifest. Under your authority, I can forward a copy to the designated civilian the instant you establish contact. And Ranger-?"

"-What?!" I had just wrapped my arms around my flailing coat when Doctor Fuck-its shot me the last bit.

"-Best of luck to you and Vauban both."

That sentiment was offered with the best of intentions, but I didn't even bother to reply.

It was just a waste of Vauban's precious time.

I was out of the Pokemon Center door and hoofing it west to the designated Azure precinct's Pokemart before Nurse Joy could even blink.

…

Pokemarts. The only time you'll ever see the hardcore competitive Trainers patronizing these establishments is after the Trainer Marts have closed.

Thanks to their mon grooming and therapy services, Pokemarts are generally open twenty-four seven just to provide their customers' Pokemon with the required around the clock attention that certain delicate species require.

That said, most Pokemarts operate with only a skeleton crew after midnight. Generally they manage to function with even less than the bare essential staff, but still…

-A Pokemart's front doors are never locked.

Which was a damn good thing for me and Vauban.

-If 'Gwyn' was in, that is.

 _Gwyn_.

If I knew who she really was before I met her…

-I would have made the Azure precinct's Pokemart my very first stop in Cerulean.

I had just about torn the glass swinging door from its hinges when I dashed into the Pokemart. Predictably for the late hour, there wasn't a soul behind the counter.

"Hello?! Anyone in here?!" I slammed my hand down on the counter's bell, anxious as all fuck.

"-I'll be with you in a second! I'm almost done here!" A voice shouted from the back room.

"I don't have a fucking second to spare! This is a fucking emergency!"

I should have known better than to expect the clerk to take me seriously. He probably heard that line on a nightly basis working the late shift. Only the fucking wackos patronized these establishments after midnight.

"I said that I'd be with you in a minute!" The clerk hollered, his voice growing annoyed. But that irritated tone had nothing on the rage that shook my clenched neck.

"I'M FROM THE RANGER CORPS, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THE FUCK THAT MEANS?!"

-That warning reduced my wait by a negative integer squared.

The absent clerk booked his ass to the counter, and froze solid when he saw that I wasn't joking about the color of my uniform.

"...Oh shit…"

That's right, you professional mon-humper. I'm from the dark side. The ying to your ethical yang. I'm a professional mon-killer.

"I'm looking for a 'Gwyn.' Apparently she's a registered botanical surgeon. Any idea where I might find her?" I didn't even have to get into character. Vauban's predicament had put me in the perfect state of being for making mon-humpers shit themselves silly. I was full-on danger mode; no bullshit tolerated, no mercy to spare, and both hands itching to solve all my problems with the crudest means that mankind has ever established: Violence.

"Manager! Gwyn! I need you at the counter! There's a Ranger looking for a botanical surgeon!" The young clerk was panicking fast. It must have been the look in my eye.

-But that crazy enraged look was about to change something drastically…

"What do you mean there's a Ranger at the counter? The Rangers don't-" The manager barked back, rounding a corner in the backroom.

'Gwyn' stopped dead in her tracks when she caught sight of me.

-And I froze stiff when I saw her.

Her name tag did say 'Gwyn'...

 _-But that face had another name I was familiar with._

It took me a moment to overcome the shock. A moment, and a squeal from Vauban. I ignored the ice running down my spine, and pulled up the strongest voice that I could muster.

"I have a Bulbasaur undergoing symbiotic separation… The local Pokemon Center refuses to operate on her, and the Rangers will kill her if they find out about her condition… Please… Please, I'm begging you… save my little girl…" I was weeping at the end, and not all those tears were being shed in fear for Vauban. Those particular tears were reflected on a certain botanical surgeon's face as well.

-We had never once met before…

 _...But we both recognized the other…_

"...A Saboteur Class?" Gwyn asked me in a quiet voice.

"... _Please…_ I don't want to lose another one…"

That face was bringing it all back. I was standing at that ledge again. I was facing their screams. I was looking right at them as they died…

"...Ricky, go clear out the cooler immediately. And break out one of the hermit-tents. Not the display model. That one has holes in it. Set up a new hermit-tent in the cooler. I have to go get my kit from home. Ranger-" Gwyn was giving orders in a level voice, even though she could barely see through the glistening pools in either eye.

"-You're helping Ricky set up a makeshift operating room. You're also paying whatever it costs us to operate on your Bulbasaur, regardless of whether she makes it not. Now hurry it up, both of you. I'll be right back." Gwyn pushed right past me without a second look. I briefly wondered if she was just gonna ditch me in Cerulean and run away again…

-But then Vauban's scream pulled me out of it, and both Ricky and I hauled ass to the cooler to begin portering all the Pokemart's perishable products into the hallway, just to make room for the hermit-tent that would serve as our sterile section.

…

"I need fifteen CCs of Romifidine now." Gwyn ordered of me.

Ricky and I were playing nurse to Gwyn's makeshift operating table.

-I really, really had to hand it to her…

Gwyn was operating on a malfunctioning Saboteur unit without wearing the prescribed Alpha-two Hazmat rig as a standard precaution.

Gwyn was going into a lethally toxic Bulbasaur equipped with only a dust mask and latex gloves for protection.

"I don't think that an anesthetic is gonna work… Saboteurs are designed to metabolise any foreign substances introduced to their-"

"I'm well aware of what a Saboteur's Waterloo metabolism is capable of, Ranger! Now get me the fifteen CCs of Romifidine, or get the hell out of my operating room!" Gwyn was shaking at the gills. That wasn't just urgency making her feel so anxious.

I was in the same room as Gwyn, and it was obviously bringing up some painful memories for her too.

"Fifteen CCs of Romifidine. Roger that." I filled the syringe just past the measured line, before ejecting the cylinder of what little pocket of air still lingered within the needle. I passed the prepped anesthetic over to Gwyn, and she sank that needle right into Vauban's spine without even taking a second of our time to check for a clearance in between the Bulbasaur's vertebrae.

Gwyn didn't need to locate a point of injection. True to her reputation as a prodigy, she knew exactly how many vertebrae lined the spinal column of Bulbasaur, and had every bone's location mapped out in her memory.

"That'll keep the bulb busy for a while. Part of the toxin metabolism process inhibits the immune system's response so as to perform protein breakdown on the invading material and structure imitation. It's not going to stop your Bulbasaur from feeling the knife, but it will give her bulb something to chew on while we extract the roots-"

"-Extract?! I thought that we were trying to reverse the separation-!"

"-If you have a problem with my methods, Ranger; then you can take your Bulbasaur straight to an incinerator! You are not a botanical surgeon! You aren't even a certified surgical technician! So you either do exactly what I say, when I say it; or your Bulbasaur will die!" Gwyn finally lost her head on me. I was almost grateful that she screaming at me. At the same time, I was beginning to understand what had drawn Brenda to her in the first place…

"Both of you start untangling those roots, and then start placing the ends in ice water. We're going to slow the bulb's metabolism down to a crawl."

-Melissa had some serious fucking guts…

"...It's gonna be okay, Vauban… We're gonna get you taken care of, girl…" I was pulling that tangle of roots apart as gently as I could. Ricky took the knobbly bloodstained strands that I handed him, and submerged them in bowls of ice water. Melissa was already prepping Vauban's back for surgery, while rotating her portable sonographic instrument around Vauban's traitorous bulb.

"Alright, the primary root is still linked to her spinal column. That just elevated her chance of survival to seventy-percent. But the oral roots are pulling out of her arteries, and the dermis roots are trying to digest her soft tissues. We have to keep the oral roots firmly lodged in her arteries, but the dermis roots have to come out immediately. Ricky, as soon as you're done sinking those roots, I need you to go fill a trough with the heavy loam mix and bring it in here."

"Got it!" Ricky was caught up in the scene. He hadn't a clue just how fucking lethal this Bulbasaur was. Ricky didn't even know that we were operating on a bio-bomb in his place of employment. All that fifteen year-old mon-humper saw when he looked at Vauban was a mon in trouble…

"Okay! That's the last of the roots! I'll go get the soil ready!"

...And just like every good mon-humper, Ricky wasn't about to stand idle while my little girl was suffering.

-I could've kissed that empathetic pubescent shit for his blind devotion to my Vauban.

Ricky sealed the hermit-tent on his way out of the cooler, and rushed off to fill a trough with nutrient rich dirt. Leaving just me and Vauban alone in the cooler with the widow of one of our dearly departed squadmates.

"...Melissa?" I didn't even know where to begin. Sorry just sounded so hollow in my guilty heart.

"-This is a really bad time for that conversation, Zane." Melissa somehow managed to keep her voice calm as she started her first incision. I held Vauban's screaming chin against my shoulder when the knife dug into her.

"It's okay! It's okay Vauban! Don't worry! I'm here! I'm right here! You'll be okay, girl… I promise you'll be okay…"

 _-I made that promise to Brenda too…_

"Just keep her calm, Zane. That's the best thing you can do right now." Melissa made her second incision, and Vauban just about leapt off the table when the pain reached her brain.

"Hold her steady, Ranger!"

I had both arms wrapped around my crying girl, my face was pressed up against hers; my mouth was murmuring nonsensical reassurances, and my wounded heart was bleeding for my screaming Vauban.

"-I'm going to try extracting the dermis roots, and then we'll plant them into the soil. Then I'm going to inject Vauban's bulb with a heavy dose of steroids and additional nutrients. During that phase, we're going induce hypothermia in Vauban, and chill her bulb just a few degrees short of freezing. If we can initiate torpor while the bulb is in the process of explosive growth, there's a chance that we can fool the bulb into thinking that it's found a new host when we thaw it out in a favorable environment. Then right before the Ivysaur evolution cycle completes itself, we'll surgically reinsert all of the removed dermis roots back into Vauban's hide. It's our best chance of saving both her, and her continued service to the _Ranger Corps_ …" Melissa spat that last part out with venom. I couldn't blame Melissa at all for hating the Rangers. Not after Melissa's wife had been brutally murdered in her service to the Ranger Corps.

Ricky came back into the cooler, dragging a trough full of foul smelling soil over towards Melissa. It was harrowing work, holding my little girl while a surgeon cut her up, but I wasn't gonna betray my Vauban to my own squeamish feelings.

I had a duty to fulfill to my family. I had to remain calm and supportive for my Vauban. Even if I wanted to scream with her.

"That's the last of the dermis roots. Ricky, help me wash the blood off them. Ranger-" Melissa was calling me away from my weeping child, but I knew that I had to do more than just comfort Vauban.

"I need you to start planting the roots in the soil as gently as you can. I'm going to lower the temperature of the cooler to 3.9 degrees celsius. We're going to start the torpor process, so I can't have your body heat upsetting Vauban's thermal balance. No more contact is to be made with your Bulbasaur. Do I make myself clear?" Melissa was actually speaking softly to me.

"Yeah… I understand…" My voice was ragged when I pulled away from Vauban. My little girl was looking up at me with the terror and pain plain on her face. I pursed my lips and met her red eyes.

She didn't want me to leave her.

-Vauban thought that was going to die.

"Vauban… Listen carefully…" The whole room was growing silent when that tone emanated from my mouth.

"You've never once let me down. Not once. You've done me fucking proud everyday since we met. And I… I've let you down almost every Goddamn day…"

I could feel a lot more than just Vauban's eyes on me, but I was only there for my little girl.

"...That all changes today. I'm never letting you down again, Vauban. You hear me? Never fucking again-"

I had to take a moment to wrestle both my shattered breath and my quaking face back under control.

"...So don't you… So don't you fucking dare… Change your tune on me, Vauban. Don't you fucking dare start letting me down…" Vauban's terrified eyes softened. My little girl knew who I was. My Vauban knew who that voice belonged to.

That voice belonged to her, and it belonged to _only_ her.

...Vauban was the only person that I could ever be that miserable little kid for again…

"Just don't worry, Vauban… You're absolutely fine, just the way you are. I just need… Please, Vauban… Just be patient with me… It's gonna take me time to figure out who I am…"

I was tearing into my old wound. The old wound that only my Vauban could remember.

I was tearing open the old wound that the Fucking Bastard had been originally created to cover up.

"You're gonna be okay, you goofy bitch. You know who I am. And you know what it means when I make a promise…"

Vauban swallowed. Her fear was gone. She was looking up at me with those gooey red eyes of hers. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that my lizard's tears weren't being shed for the pain anymore.

Those were tears of profound joy.

My little girl finally had her Zane back.

"Just take it easy, Vauban. When you wake up, I'll be right there, right next to you. I promise."

-And that's when Melissa decided to initiate the bulb's artificially induced growth therapy…

...And my little girl started screaming all over again.

…

"The procedure was a success. Vauban is out cold and her bulb has ceased the separation process." Melissa told me when she walked out of the cooler. I was gasping in relief while Brenda's widow stripped off her blood stained gloves, and started scrubbing the toxic blood off her forearms at an employee's handwashing sink.

I'd been made to wait outside the cooler after Vauban had succumbed to torpor. Ricky had already been sent home ahead of the end of his normal shift. He was still getting paid for the hours that he wasn't working.

I had guaranteed it.

"I don't know how much is left in it, but consider it a downpayment for the expenses." I handed Melissia my Expense Account card, and the weary surgeon could only stare at me.

"I didn't think that you'd be fit for active service, after what that Snorlax did to you." Melissa's cold voice cut me to the core.

"Technically speaking, Melissa? I'm not fit for active service…" I answered softly.

"-Well, boo-hoo."

I just took it. Melissa had every right to want me dead. I wasn't going to defend myself from her. I deserved everything that she wanted to throw at me.

"Are you just going to stand there, looking like a lost little brat? What's the matter, Zane? Have you lost your nerve? Are you that pathetic? You know, Brenda used to tell me that you were indestructible…"

-Those words brought my dead stare up from the floor.

...Brenda used to talk to Melissa about me?

"Melissa… I did everything that I could… I swear… I did everything I could to keep her alive…" I never wanted to beg. I never intended to plead. I never wanted to be selfish. But I couldn't help it.

Melissa wasn't the only one who loved Bren…

"...Then why is she dead, Zane... And why are you still alive?"

The grief and hate in her voice held the same jagged edge that echoed in those bitter words.

I didn't have an answer for Melissa. I would never find that answer.

"...You should've died with her… I wouldn't hate you so much if you had…" Melissa was shaking with the anger and the tears.

-I could reflect that same sentiment...

This is what I deserved. This is what I had been preparing myself for since I decided to seek out Melissa. This was exactly what I needed to hear…

...And it all felt like it was going to kill me…

"I promised her… I promised Bren that I'd bring her back to you…" My child's voice was squeaking past the choke in my throat. I dug into my wallet and pulled out the ruined photo…

Brenda.

Melissa.

The two smiling girls.

The two crying lovers on their wedding day.

...I offered it to Melissa with a shaking hand.

I presented her with that terrible little photo while I curled into myself just from seeing her smiling face again…

Brenda.

My Brenda…

Melissa threw my hand wide, and sent that photo flying.

"That's not my Brenda, you stupid fuck!" Melissa was livid. She was spitting through her tears at the cowering Ranger, who couldn't stop his own weeping for all of the world.

"...She's gone, Zane. She's dead. And I'll never get away from her ghost…"

-Oh, how familiar those words sounded to me…

"...I'd do anything, Melissa… Anything to bring her back to you-"

Melissa started choking on her tears just to laugh. But this was far from a funny laugh.

"Anything? Anything?! You couldn't do anything! You couldn't do anything to save her then, and you can't do anything for her now! I don't want to hear your worthless apologies! I don't want to see your selfish tears! I just want my Brenda back…" Melissa fell back against the wall, breaking apart at the seams.

...And there was nothing that I could do to comfort her.

...Nothing that I could do to ease the suffering of Brenda's widow…

I straightened myself out. I stifled my own tears. I held myself with as much dignity as I could possibly muster.

"I'm sorry for your loss, Melissa. I'm sorry that your wife died under my command." I solemnly stated.

She wanted to hate me? Fine.

That was perfectly fine.

If Melissa wanted to hate me, then I'd be the Ranger that she could hate without any moral bars to hold her loathing back.

I'd be the Fucking Bastard for Melissa.

"I wish that my condolences were worth something more to you, but I understand why they aren't. Thank you for your assistance in saving-"

-Melissa was suddenly in my arms.

 _-She put herself there._

Melissa's face was pressed up against my sternum, and she was weeping into the front of my uniform. I could barely move for all of my shock. Something small and urgent in my head told me that I needed to do something quick, but in the end...

...All I could do was hold her…

...All I could do was grieve with her...

...And I didn't know what else I could do…

…

"Request denied."

Captain Lewis was laying down the law.

"Captain, Vauban is out of commission for at least another week. That leaves me with only Cortez, Damascus, and _Darwin._ I cannot beat Misty without the fourth member of my team. Both Cortez and Damascus are at a serious disadvantage in her Gym, and _Darwin-_ "

"I said, 'request denied.' You are not postponing your Cerulean City Gym challenge with Willows. That is final." Captain Lewis didn't even blink. And I was left fuming across the desk from her.

"Okay. Why don't I just hand Willows my forfeit notice now, and spare my squad the humiliation-"

"-You will be in that Gym's ring three days from now, Zane. And you will leave that Gym ring with the Cascade Badge. You will not forfeit the match. Do I make myself clear?" Captain Lewis cut me off.

-No. You didn't make yourself clear. You made yourself a target for all of my pent up frustrations.

"Yes sir! I'll immediately start training Cortez on how to dog paddle even faster than a Starmie that can psionically jettison itself through the water. And Damascus? Hell, I'll just carve a prismatically coefficient hull into his bottom half. I'll make that Onix float in water even if it kills him. Oh, and Darwin? I've been trying to train that obese failure in basic combat applications for over a year now without any tickle of success, but fuck it! I'm sure that in three day's time, I'll have turned that worthless fucking Magikarp into a Championship heavyweight! Why don't we all just say 'fuck reality' right fucking now and shoot for the moon; because in Captain Lewis's world, stupid is an unstoppable fucking force!" I was going _way past_ my rank and its prescribed etiquette in this unfathomable situation, but this was some seriously stupid fucking bullshit.

"Are you quite finished?" Captain Lewis wasn't even phased by my explosive rant. She should've strung me up by the intestines for railing on a Superior Officer in the way that I'd just ridden on her, but that cold hearted bitch didn't even give a fuck.

-Which only made even me more angry.

"You are behind schedule, Zane. You're a month and a half behind schedule. The Venomoth incident in Viridian cost you a massive chunk of the season. We cannot afford anymore delays in the League. Regardless of whether or not your squad is prepared for an aquatic Gym battle, you will still challenge Misty Willows for the Cascade Badge. And you will win that Badge." Captain Lewis sternly informed me.

"Shit, if only I had your fucked up confidence, then I could stupid my way through the entire fucking League with nothing more than a six-mon roster of Darwins." I replied.

-And that smart ass comment was the last straw.

Captain Lewis had my face crushed into the desktop with one of my arms twisted behind my back even faster than it took for her previously-occupied swivel chair to hit the floor.

"Okay, Zane. We'll go about it the hard way." Captain Lewis's voice hadn't changed a bit. Her cold tone sounded just as causal when breaking me over her desk as it had sounded when addressing me in all of our other 'civil' interactions.

Normally when I was put in this kind of a position, I would have started making lewd comments regarding grandmas and their creepy fetishes; but when a pissed off Blackhat has you pinned against a hard surface, and is only a couple inches of pivot away from snapping your arm off at the shoulder…

...Even a Fucking Bastard wisens up.

"Base command, this is Captain Lewis. Lt. Col Rionaldo? I'm making a formal request for another Blackhat unit to accompany Warrant Officer Zane Bastard and myself to Cerulean Prime's Frontier training facilities."

"..."

"Thank you, sir. I'll instruct the deck crews to prep Solomon and Tisiphone for a field exercise immediately."

"..."

"Yes, I'm bringing the Wyrms. It seems that our Warrant Officer Bastard is going to require a little bit of encouragement in order to adequately perform his assigned duties."

"..."

"I'll put him on now, sir."

A radio's headset was jammed into my ear, and the corresponding mouthpiece was positioned next to my smashed lips.

"Warrant Officer Bastard?" The voice of Lt. Colonel Rionaldo sounded in my ear.

"Yeth thir?" I couldn't exactly articulate with a mouthful of cherry and beech, but I still endeavored to answer the Blackhat Commander with what little dignity I had left. All was silent for a moment, before Lt. Col Rionaldo sighed on his end, and elected to pen a touching epitaph for yours truly.

"It was nice knowing you, kid."

 _-Click._

"Twansmissin compwheat." I grunted up to Captain Lewis. She yanked that radio right out of my head, and dragged my disheveled figure off her desk.

"You have five minutes to holster up in a flight suit. You'll be riding on Solomon with me. Prep every available unit on your team for a scrapping, and let them know beforehand that they're only going to be suffering so much today because their CO decided to get lippy with _his_ CO. You will be bleeding in the dirt right alongside them, Warrant Officer Bastard. I guarantee it."

Captain Lewis's tone never shifted. She probably ordered take-out with that ice cold voice. She barely gave me two measly seconds to straighten out my beret before she was hoofing it towards the Blackhat's locker room, leaving me to scrabble in her dust.

...

"Boy, oh boy. Did you piss off ol' Lou or what?" Lieutenant Roscoe was grinning like a sumbitch when he greeted me in the docking yard.

"Does she have Snorlax in her family's ancestry?" I grumbled to the Lieutenant, who burst out laughing at my jab.

"Son, those big evil fat fuckers ain't got nothing on Captain Lewis when it comes down to a spiteful rage. They haven't got shit on that cold hearted bitch. Ain't that right, Lou?" Lieutenant Roscoe galled me when he announced our conversation to the entire docking yard.

"Cut the hyperbole, Lieutenant; and get on your fucking Wyrm." Captain Lewis was right behind us.

That voice made me want to shit myself.

Captain Lewis was not amused by my Snorlax family reference.

She wasn't fucking amused at all.

"Yes sir." Said a very happy Lieutenant Roscoe, directing a gleeful grin to my ashen-faced person right before he disappeared.

Fucking Vets, man…

They really…

 _-Really…_

...Like fucking with one another…

"Warrant Officer Bastard, this is Solomon. Solomon this is Warrant Officer Bastard." Captain Lewis introduced me to her awaiting Gyarados.

-Who decided that he could introduce himself in the loudest and most terrifying way imaginable.

That huge blue mouth was suddenly a scant meter away from my face in one of Solomon's lighting quick reflexes, flecking me with chords of spit and causing my entire spine to rattle with that one loud motherfucking roar.

- _Gyaradosia_.

Need I say more?

"I think he likes you, Warrant Officer!" Lieutenant Roscoe hollered from his Gyarados's rostrum saddle.

"You can eat whatever is left of him when I'm done working him over, Solomon." Captain Lewis promised her Wyrm. She was standing right next to me when Solomon had decided to show off his vocal fortitude, and Captain Lewis was completely unfazed by the decibels that had knocked my lapels loose.

I, on the other hand, was immensely grateful that my flight suit was equipped with a waste collection and cycling system; which had saved me the grief of changing my shorts.

"Have you been trained for Aviation before, Warrant Officer?" Captain Lewis asked me, passing an enclosed flight helmet my way. I accepted the helmet and managed a stiff nod.

"What kind Aviation units?" Captain Lewis continued her grill of my Academy credentials.

"...Class Twos, and a little bit of Class Threes-"

"-Oh, he is so fucked!" Lieutenant Roscoe was laughing his ass off, all while doing handstands on his Gyarados's saddle.

"Not good, Warrant Officer. Not good at all. Do you know what Flight Index the Gyaradosia species belongs to?" Captain Lewis fixed her stern gaze on my glassed-over and hollow eye.

-Of course I fucking knew.

"...Class Six."

Gyaradosia have that Class all to themselves. Even the Aerodactyls and the Salamencia species are easier to fly than the fucking Gyaradosia.

"Don't worry, Zane! I've trained Tisiphone for Aerial Retrieval! She can catch your ass before you hit the ground!" Lieutenant Roscoe was giving me his friendliest evil smile.

...Just so we're clear on something…

-Aerial Retrieval isn't a rescue procedure. Aerial Retrieval is a combat maneuver. So this was Lieutenant Roscoe kindly informing me; that if I fell from Solomon's rostrum, he'd let his Tisiphone swallow me alive.

"Well, Warrant Officer, you're going to have to learn how to fly Class Six sooner or later. I'm giving you Solomon's reins for our flight to Cerulean Prime. Try not to piss him off." That was all Captain Lewis had to say before her deck crew hoisted me up onto Solomon's saddle, and put his heavy reins in my shaking hands.

"Give him hell, Solomon!" Lieutenant Roscoe cheered. Captain Lewis took her position in saddle's second cusp behind me.

"Are you ready, Zane?" Captain Lewis asked me after we'd been strapped in by the deck crew. I drew a shaking breath, and steeled my nervous self with it.

"Deck Chief! This is Blackhat Solomon! Requesting clearance for takeoff!" I shouted across the docking yard with the firmest voice that I could summon.

"Roger that, Blackhat Solomon. You are cleared for takeoff. The skys are clear and the opposing wind speed is minimal. Proceed to an altitude of eleven-hundred meters and maintain cruising altitude for your heading twenty kilometers north-east. Begin your descent ten kilometers before reaching your destination. Bring them all back home alive, you filthy Wyrms! Fly high!"

Both Tisiphone and Solomon let out an earth shaking roar, and with a squeeze of my heels and a slight twist of Solomon's taut reins, we lifted off from the docking yard enclosure; and proceeded to fly parallel with the rising sun.

…

"You can ease up now, Bastard. The rough bit is over." Captain Lewis informed me over the mic.

"Not a bad climb for a Gyaradosia virgin's first time! Of course, your final grade will have to wait until the landing!" Lieutenant Roscoe tossed in his two Sandz.

"Good God, all that fucking bucking for just a measly eleven hundred meters of altitude…" I groaned, trying to loosen up my bruised and aching thighs.

"Blame the Gyaradosia's zeppelin physiology. That's why they'll never make the private sector's list of viable Aviation units." Captain Lewis said through the com set.

"Come on Zane! Do a barrel roll already!" Lieutenant Roscoe suddenly came up on our port side, throwing down a snakey burst of speed on his massive Tisiphone.

"-Don't." Captain Lewis grabbed my wrist as I started manhandling Solomon's reins.

"-Was he really gonna fucking do it?!" Lieutenant Roscoe shouted over the mic in disbelief.

"I'm the Fucking Bastard, Lieutenant. Don't dare me to do something and not expect me to do it." I grinned into the mic.

"Ooooh _shiiit_. I can't wait to see how you land that beast. They're gonna have to rebuild Cerulean Prime after you plow it into the ground. I can already tell." Lieutenant Roscoe started showing off on Tisiphone, doing one handed supermans on the saddle's pommel.

"Quit the showboating Lieutenant, before you get yourself killed." Captain Lewis grumbled over the mic.

"Oh, get off Lou! Lighten up a bit! It's the perfect day for flying! Come on, Tisiphone! Give Solomon a little lip!" Lieutenant Roscoe was fucking loving it dangerously.

"Jerry, don't you dare-!" Captain Lewis began angrily, but that was as far as she got. Tisiphone invaded our airspace, and bit down on Solomon's throat.

" _Waw-hoo!"_

We had a fucking cowboy on the back of a fucking Gyarados; cruising at eleven hundred meters above fucking sea level, just trying to piss off our own fucking Wyrm.

"Get 'em Solomon!" I roared, twisting Solomon's reins to port and kicking my Wyrm in the rostrum.

-Which was the stupidest thing that I could've done.

Egging a Gyarados on when it had just been attacked at cruising altitude is anything but a good idea. Especially when you're riding that Gyarados.

-But despite being a stupid idea?

 _...It was still fucking exciting._

"Oh FUCK!"

Lieutenant Roscoe and Tisiphone were suddenly a lot closer than anybody was comfortable with. The two flying snakes were beginning to coil around one another in the initial sequence of an aerial dual.

"DISENGAGE! DISENGAGE!" I was hollering to the furious Gyarados below me.

-We were gonna get crushed between those two tussling Wyrms.

"That's enough!" Captain Lewis took the reins from my hands and jerked hard on Solomon's bit. That Gyarados broke off immediately, nearly throwing my ass off his saddle in the blind haste he only knew in obeying his CO's directive. Tisiphone righted herself out after Solomon's coils started falling away, and both pilots put down a healthy distance between their two angry snakes.

"Don't you ever do that again, you crazy son of a bitch!" Lieutenant Roscoe wasn't laughing anymore.

"What?! You started it!" I was justifiably indignant.

"Jerry, if you keep pulling shit like this, I will ground your ass for good!" Captain Lewis growled into the mic.

"How's this all my fault?! Zane was the one-" Lieutenant Roscoe was bitching from his saddle.

"-You're the Lieutenant, Jerry! So fucking act like one!" Captain Lewis was truly pissed. And even Reckless Roscoe of Blackhat Team Seven was smart enough to back down when faced with this Ursaring of a woman.

"Yes sir!" It was all business tone from good ol' Roscoe.

"And you-" Captain Lewis rounded on me with a rumble. Then I heard a private communique alert over the mic, and I switched my radio onto the designated secure channel.

"-Good job." Captain Lewis's stern voice informed me, before she switched back to the open channel.

I was smiling like my namesake when Tisiphone and Solomon fell back into the standard two-wing formation.

"It really is a beautiful day for flying." I announced, stretching my legs and arms against the frigid air resistance.

The clouds were still high above us, but the land was far below us; and from up here in the sky, we could see glimmering Cerulean not far off to our south, and the creeping shadow of Mt. Moon stretching across the sunlit surface of the earth.

Sprawling green jungle below us, white dappled heaven above us, sparkling blue ocean before us, and the visible curvature of the earth following a line across the horizon on all sides.

-What a fucking experience.

Why did I join the Sapper Division when Aviation was a viable career option for me?

-Oh yeah...

"-Still, it would have been an even more beautiful day for blowing something up…" I mournfully amended.

…

"Okay Cortez, listen closely." I knelt down beside my hound, and clipped a radio transmitter to the corner of his scarred up ear.

"That thing has a wicked horn that can cut you in half with a single stroke. She's fast on her feet, but don't let that limber frame fool you; she's a lot stronger than she looks." I tested the radio with my own ear, ensuring that my voice was reaching my dog across the closed channel.

"Now you have the advantage of range, but remember; that thing is an Interloper. A Blackhat Interloper. She can fade right into the Distortion and phase out right on top of you in a split second, so when she starts her feinting tactics, you go on the defensive. Keep moving, and make your motions erratic. She can only feint so many times before she exhausts herself, so that's when we'll make our finishing move. But before the you even think of performing the finisher, you need to remember one thing; _keep moving._ " I patted my hound's rump, and stood back; relinquishing the field to Cortez.

"Are you ready Zane?" Lieutenant Roscoe called out to me across the Frontier training yard.

"Ready." I replied. My calm dog hunkered down ever so slowly and wiggled his haunches. Some of the Vets spectating were already cheering my name.

"And are you ready Captain?" Lieutenant Roscoe called out to my opponent.

"Ready." Captain Lewis answered from her Absol's shadow.

"Well then, germs and gents… LET THE BATTLE BEGIN!" Lieutenant Roscoe finally found a use for that loud mouth of his.

Lieutenant Roscoe could have made for a phenomenal League commentator.

-If he cleaned his language up.

"CORTEZ! ENGAGE INTERLOPER!"

"Karst, put that dog down."

We had just gotten started…

-And it already wasn't looking very good for my hound.

Karst didn't waste her time feinting. She had no need to. Karst had Cortez beat in the speed and power departments, and she proved that in the first three seconds of the match when she deftly evaded Cortez's initial gout of flames…

-And then trampled my dog into the mud.

"Cortez!"

My dog was up on his feet in a flash, and now he was eyeing Karst with a wary glare. That Absol didn't even seem to be concerned about the tiny dog that dared to rise for another round of punishment. Karst started grooming her shoulder with a tongue, as if she wasn't worried about the outcome of this fight.

-Karst was completely at ease, that is; until somebody made her care about this fight.

"Take out his legs, Karst." Cold ol' Captain Lewis knew exactly what I had been planning to do all along, and she knew exactly how to fuck it up.

My anti-Interloper strategy was shot to shit when Captain Lewis just decided to overpower and cripple Cortez instead of utilizing Karst's feinting capabilities.

"Okay, that's enough!" I shouted after Karst trampled my dog for the fourth time. Cortez hadn't even singed a single one of her white hairs yet, and he was getting the shit kicked out of him by the endless assault.

"I said that's enough!" I roared when Karst headed butted my snarling dog into the dirt.

"Cortez, fall back to me. You did well enough-"

-Karst stuck her horn in between Cortez's fore legs, and tossed his ass into the air.

"I SAID ENOUGH!"

-Nope.

I didn't get to say when enough was enough.

"Karst, beat that dog to within an inch of its life." Captain Lewis calmly ordered. And Karst was happy to oblige.

I was looking at my Captain with naked horror inscribed on my expression. Karst pounced on Cortez again, forfeiting to a feral rage as she bit into my dog's throat; before ragdolling poor Cortez like a chew toy, and dropping his still ass in the dirt.

"That's not enough, Karst. That Growlithe can bleed more than that." Captain Lewis berated her Absol for breaking off early.

-And Karst returned to torturing my yelping dog with a gusto.

"ENOUGH!" I took to the field with my knife drawn, ignoring the cries of outrage that our Vet spectators made when I kicked that evil Absol off my hound and pulled his bleeding ass out of the mud.

Cortez licked my chin when I held him against chest. I could hear him wheezing through his bloody snout.

"It's okay, Cortez, it's over. I got-"

-Something hit my right temple with enough force to send me into the dirt.

"You're not allowed to enter the field in the middle of match, Ranger. That qualifies as an automatic forfeit." Captain Lewis put her boot heel on my crawling hand, and started twisting the skin under her treads.

"I forfeited the match when I recalled Cortez!" I hissed from the ground.

Captain Lewis's other foot connect with my ribs.

"You're not allowed to forfeit." Captain Lewis informed me.

"I'm not watching my soldier get hurt for nothing-"

-A boot toe in my mouth shut me up fast.

"That's technically not a soldier, Warrant Officer. That's a servicemon. Same damn thing as a bullet. Now use it like a servicemon." Captain Lewis stood back, while I coughed on the gravel and the blood.

"Get up. We're not done training you, Zane." Captain Lewis ordered. I pushed my shabby self to my feet and stared down my CO.

"Good. Now take your position on the opposite end of the field."

I did exactly as I was ordered, abandoning my pooch on the stage, and taking my ragged position on the mark.

"Okay, Zane. I'm giving you the first move." Captain Lewis announced when the field had been reset for the second round. Karst sat down on her haunches, and started licking Cortez's blood from her uplifted paw; acting like there was nothing in the world that could possibly trouble her Absol self.

"Cortez?" I looked over to my beaten dog. One purple eye fell on me.

I almost choked when I gave him my next order.

- _Cortez knew what was going to happen to him._

 _...And he didn't blame me for it._

"Take her down!"

Cortez broke into a gimpy run, snarling with those black lips of his drawn back from the canines, and a rabid hate glowing in either mismatched eye. He was gonna face his flogging with dignity, no matter how severe the punishment was.

Karst let him close the gap for her, before she shot back up to all fours, and cooly resumed beating the fucking hell out my Cortez.

And I had to watch the entire thing, stripped absolutely helpless as my stalwart hound put up his best against Karst, even in the face of certain futility.

-The only victory that could be achieved in this match…

 _...Was me holding back the tears…_

…

"Cortez is in the infirmary. He'll make a full recovery before your match against Willows. Karst didn't inflict a single wound anymore severe than what that Kadabra already did." Captain Lewis informed me while I sat in the dirt. Our Veteran spectators were gone. Lieutenant Roscoe had run off with Tisiphone to go deliver an overdose of overkill to a gallows drape of Tangrowths infesting the frontline of Sector Foxtrot. Leaving just me and Captain Lewis alone in the Frontier training yard.

Alone to carry on the lesson.

"...I thought that we were gonna be training, Captain Lewis. But the only thing my dog learned from that sham was what pain feels like. What was the point to all that?" I growled.

Captain Lewis laid me on my back again with a fist between my eyes, and then added another boot-shaped bruise to the collection of blue skin forming on my ribs.

"What did you learn, Bastard?" Captain Lewis asked.

I didn't answer her. I was too busy glaring across the ground and off into the distance. But Captain Lewis had an answer for me.

"-You learned what it feels like to be rendered helpless."

-Oh, this lesson again.

"There was absolutely nothing that you could do, was there?" Captain Lewis kicked me in the jaw, just to pivot my distant eyes over and on to her.

-Unfortunately for her, she was only going to get one eye.

My fake eye popped right out the socket from the force of her kick, and rolled off into the mud.

-But I still met her severe gaze with my one cold eye.

"So how did you like feeling helpless?" Captain Lewis asked.

"...I'm never helpless." I growled past my bloodied teeth.

"Wrong answer." Captain Lewis stomped on my solar plexus, just to drive the point home.

"You should know by now, Bastard. You of all people should know…" Captain Lewis's voice wavered ever so slightly as I choked for breath beneath her.

"...I know what it is to be helpless. I don't need you reinforcing that." I spat, pulling myself out of the curl.

"...I don't think that you do understand what is to be helpless." Captain Lewis started picking me up, if only to drop my limp ass back on the ground.

"You see Bastard… You've lost. You've lost it all. Your edge, your drive, your focus, and your discipline. You've lost everything that made you a soldier." Captain Lewis just left me on my back in the dirt.

"I was afraid that this was going to happen. You finally caved into that soft side of yours, didn't you?" Captain Lewis actually sounded upset.

"...Is there a problem with that?" I asked in an iron tone.

Captain Lewis just sighed.

"What was it Bastard? Was it nearly losing your ' _little girl?'_ Did some of that PTSD finally manage to crack your mold? Or maybe it was you meeting the widow of your deceased squadmate in Cerulean."

I swallowed the burning in my throat.

"How long have you known about Melissa's location?" I asked as I rose into a sitting position, while somehow keeping the anger out of my voice.

"So it is the widow. I wondered why you started acting so strangely."

"How long?" I repeated my toneless question to Captain Lewis, as I picked my fake eye up out of the dirt, and stuffed it in a coat pocket. It was a long while before Captain spoke again.

"...We never lost track of Melissa Eckleson. As far as we were concerned, she never even disappeared." Captain Lewis answered quietly.

"So is that ACE talking, or the Ranger Corps?" I looked up at Captain Lewis with my one eye.

She didn't answer.

"...ACE… Why am I not surprised?" I stated with a sigh.

"You might want to tread carefully, Zane." Captain Lewis whispered a warning to me. I just snorted.

"Why? I'm lost, remember? I'm obviously just a fucking liability now. High Command doesn't want a broken down soldier leading their campaign, so I guess that means I'm out of Operation: Wounded Hearts-"

Captain Lewis moved like a bolt of lightning. I was on my feet and being forced into a straightened position in the blink of an eye.

"...No. You're not out, Zane. You're still in." Captain Lewis's voice had gone hoarse. She was dusting me off and avoiding my calm gaze.

"...What can I do, Captain Lewis? I'm helpless every second of everyday, and I have to wear a mask just to throw people off-"

"-Quit talking like that. _Now_." Captain Lewis was genuinely pissed. I did as I was ordered, and shut my mouth tight.

"You're the Fucking Bastard, Zane. The star of the Ranger's future. So stop this self exploration bullshit train that you decided to jump on, and be the Fucking Bastard again. We can't afford your selfish reflections. We need a soldier on the Throne, Zane. Not a philosopher." Captain Lewis growled.

"You brought me into this Operation because you wanted a soldier… But have you ever asked yourself what kind of soldier you were gonna get?" I was still numb to it all. The pain, the grief, the fear, and the anger.

-I couldn't feel any of it anymore.

I was hollow. Dead. Void of my illusions. Naked. The mask cast aside.

"Get your ass back into position on the field, Zane. I am not done turning you back into a soldier yet." Captain Lewis hissed.

Like a puppet, I did exactly as I was ordered.

I didn't care.

I was fucking lost.

...And I didn't want to be found.

"Solomon, report." Captain Lewis broke out her ultimate weapon. The nastiest species of mon to serve in the Ranger Corps.

Look at you, you big angry snake…

Were you really once just a dopey Magikarp, blissfully jumping out the water for no other reason than because you wanted to fly?

...Do I really want my goofy Darwin to turn into you?

"Send out your big one, Zane. You don't even know what helpless means yet…" Captain Lewis was approaching her redline. She was near wit's end with apathetic me.

She wanted a soldier?

Fine.

-Then I'd show her a soldier.

"Damascus, report." I raised my own Heavy Ball, and released the tragic King of Mount Silver from his prison. My lost and broken Damascus. My ancient and hurting snake. A puppet who fought against his own strings.

-The perfect soldier.

"Damascus. Can you remember who I am?"

My giant white snake turned his milky blue eyes over to me.

I had never once addressed grandpa Damascus with that voice before, but my amazing snake…

...My amazing snake knew exactly who I was to him…

For one terrible moment, I saw the hope widen Damascus's eyes. I saw the disbelief.

- _He thought that I was his Doug…_

 _...And I had to tell Damascus the wretched truth..._

"...Doug is dead, Damascus… I'm Zane… You remember who Zane is, don't you?"

It would have been kinder to grandpa Damascus if I had just killed him then. I saw that look of hope go cold like a dying ember, as cruel reality set into my poor snake's warped brain.

"I'm sorry, Damascus… I'm so sorry… I miss him too…" Damascus may have looked away from me, yet those coils of his still tightened protectively around my person all the same.

 _I wasn't his Doug…_

-But I was still a part of Damascus's family.

"...So here's the deal. You see that ugly fucking snake, over there by the woman in the Black Beret?" I softly asked. Damascus reluctantly lifted his head and faced the pair of Rangers that I was indicating.

Solomon huffed up, and spread his massive fins in a vivid display. Chromatophores lining the inside of his pectoral and dorsal membranes exploded with wild colors, as a rainbow washed over the surface of an Alpha Gyarados's fins. Every fluttering sail on that snake shifted through every metallic shade in the spectrum as Solomon ruffled his striking raiments. Gyaradosia look big enough without those fins, but when they're preparing for a fight…

...Gyaradosia will flare their colorful sails just to make themselves appear three times larger than their already massive size, all for the purpose of intimidating the fucking piss out of whatever they're about to kill.

"That's your opponent. And this is our game plan..." I sighed. Damascus turned back to me with a curious look in his eye. He'd never seen a Gyarados before. Even in Damascus's two thousand years of living, the Onixia's and Gyaradosia's two vastly dissimilar habitats combined with the extreme rarity of their separate species, meant that these two titanic snakes would never meet one another in the natural world.

They were supposed to be the sovereign Kings in their own elements, never doomed to cross one another's paths.

"...We're going to lose. You're going to get hurt. I'm going to intervene, and get hurt right next to you. Then I'm gonna be seperated from you, and I'll be forced to watch as that Gyarados beats you to within an inch of your life. And then it's going to be my turn to get flogged alone while you recover. I just wanted to apologize to you now, Damascus… Like I should've when we first got thrown together…"

My snake let out _one hell_ of an angry rumble.

-I don't think that Damascus liked my plan.

"I'm sorry, Gramps… But there's nothing that I can do to change it-"

-Damascus slammed his tail on the ground with enough force to stagger me where I stood. He balanced his ass on the last three beads of his tail, and ascended straight into the heavens on his incredible length.

Behold the King of Mount Silver.

-Lording it over this little blue worm in his shadow.

 _-Bask in my splendor, you tiny insignificant snake…_

 _...This sovereign King is gonna eat your dead ass for a fucking snack._

Solomon fell in on his sails, and hissed up at the towering Damascus.

But my pissed off white snake's _RUMBLE_ drowned out that feeble snarl.

-Damascus didn't like my plan at all.

...So my ornery old man of an Onix was gonna show me a _real_ plan.

...

"..."

"To this day, I still can't believe what Damascus did next."

"..."

" _-But let me tell you right now, Doug's ancient snake was a bottomless bag of infinitely devious tricks… "_

"..."

"...And this match against Solomon and Captain Lewis?"

"..."

"-Well, this was just going to be the first of many surprises that my Damascus had in store for me."

"..."

...

Damascus held his position in the sky, looking down on the roaring Solomon like this angry blue fish was nothing more than an irritating bug.

"Solomon, bring that mountain down." Captain Lewis ordered of her Gyarados.

 _-Nope._

This mountain is perfectly capable of coming down himself.

Damascus lunged from his roost in the heavens, and brought his rumbling mass down on Solomon with an unreal speed that nothing made of rock should ever possess.

I was just as shocked as Captain Lewis when those two colossal titans crashed together in a stalemate, and began weaving their powerful coils around one another. Solomon went straight for Damascus's throat with his roaring maw, and my indestructible snake intercepted Solomon's lunge by slamming his hammer of a head right into the gaping mouth of a Gyarados.

Damascus knew how to play dirty, and Gramps wasn't turning over his Crown of dominance to this young upstart of a Gyarados without one hell of a fight.

"Solomon, break free!" Captain Lewis shouted to her struggling snake. In CQC, Damascus had the advantage. He was bigger, heavier, stronger, and a shitload _harder_ than any Gyarados alive. But if Solomon could get into the air-

"Damascus! Pin those fins!" A sudden swell of urgency conquered my inhibitions.

-Oh, how the tables had turned. Damascus did exactly what I asked of him, and woe on big bad Solomon…

-My angsty Onix was sporting for Cortez's vengeance.

I heard that Gyarados's fins _snap_ as Damascus worked his sledge of a jaw over Solomon's spines, and my Onix bit down hard on that Gyarados's left pectoral sail, before Damascus twisted the beads of his neck to maximize the damage. Solomon screamed in a bloodthirsty rage, and brought his own massive mouth down around Damascus's conical head.

Gyaradosia have one nasty bite. The amount of newton force that their jaws can apply will crush stones into dust, but even so…

-Damascus was one _big ass_ stone, decked out with smooth, sloped, deflecting sides; which afforded a mighty poor purchase for Solomon's mighty jaws.

That Gyarados was already fucked.

 _-And Damascus was just getting started on working Solomon's ass over._

"Damascus, it's crippled! Get below ground!" I roared out to my unbelievable snake. Damascus shook off that Gyarados like a clinging branch, and then dove into the element that had secured him a Crown for these past two-thousand plus years…

-Oh no, Captain Lewis. Don't you worry 'bout a thing.

...We're not going to shaft your pissed off Wyrm.

- _Shafting just wouldn't get the point across._

I alternatively dragged and stamped my boot into the ground, and subtly relayed my orders to Damascus through the terra-medium in phonetic morse code. It was just one of the new crazy tricks that Doug had taught the vibration hypersensitive Onix named Damascus when that senile old snake had officially joined up in the Corps.

- _Surface. -Coil. -Dive._ I said.

- _RUMBLE._ Damascus replied.

That's Onix for, ' _Roger that.'_

Captain Lewis had spread her snake out nice and wide, trying to prevent any serious damage from being done to Solomon by providing a bigger target than Damascus could coordinate a direct shafting on.

Poor Captain Lewis.

-You've played right into my hands.

Or more specifically…

- _You've played right into Damascus's crushing arches._

The earth erupted in a spray of dirt and ragged sod, as a towering Onix rose back into the sky like a ornate white obelisk. Damascus had completely missed his mark, rising two whole meters off Solomon's three o'clock.

-At least it looked like he missed.

Damascus curved inwards, directing his descent towards the lunging Solomon with a graceful arch…

-And my heavyweight snake barreled right past the murderous Gyarados in what appeared to be a blind fall…

...Then my Damascus reentered the crust, completely ignoring the glancing blow from Solomon, while my Onix's tail end remained firmly lodged in his original exit shaft…

-And that enraged Gyarados was caught between the pinch in Damascus's closing beads and the hard-packed earth when my snake tightened up the slack.

-Captain Lewis figured it out one move too late.

There was nothing that she or her Wyrm could do to escape Damascus now.

-And my miraculous snake was coming back up to throw another terra-binding loop around the thrashing Gyarados.

"That enough!" Captain Lewis roared when Damascus added a third loop to the lethal embrace crushing Solomon.

"Damascus, abstain." I gave my order with a smile that would have left the Fucking Bastard whinging.

...But that Fucking Bastard…

 _-Was still gonna get the last fucking laugh._

"DAMASCUS! ABSTAIN!"

-Oh shit…

 _...That wasn't my Damascus anymore._

"DAMASCUS!"

Solomon was screaming and gnawing at the beads crucifying him to the ground, but no weapon that Captain Lewis's Gyarados could wield would break the bulwark of Damascus.

The King of Mount Silver had never eaten a Gyarados before…

 _-Though I could've told him that they tasted like prawns..._

"DAMASCUS! ABSTAIN THIS INSTANT, YOU SENILE OLD FUCK!"

Yep. He was back in his commander's seat.

-I guess that the Fucking Bastard still served a purpose.

"TISIPHONE! SORT THEM OUT!"

-Hello, Lieutenant Roscoe. A little late to the party are we?

A second Gyarados suddenly entered the fray, and bit down on Damascus's coils from on high in the sky.

-But the vicious King of Mount Silver…

 _-Was taking all comers._

Damascus rose from the ground yet again, and threw his next loop around both the airborne Tisiphone and the grounded Solomon, before he started pulling his former arches loose from the first victim…

...If only to drag the two Serpents together in a three-snake's deadly embrace when Damascus began throwing a fresh set of loops over the both of them.

-That crazy old Onix was winding a stoney grave around a pair of Gyaradosia with his emancipated mass.

And for all their unbridled rage and obscene power…

...Those livid Gyaradosia couldn't break themselves free from their certain doom.

-I couldn't believe it.

 _Damascus hadn't beaten just one Gyarados…_

-Doug's ancient D5CU had wrangled a pair of Blackhat trained Delta-Fives simultaneously, and he was taking his own sweet time constricting the two of them to death.

"DAMASCUS! CUT THEM LOOSE!"

-Holy shit.

 _We had just rendered two Blackhat behemoths absolutely helpless._

I would have been gloating like a motherfucker if this didn't mean Damascus's likely termination. If Damascus killed two G.I. Gyaradosia against his superior's orders, there wouldn't even be a delegation held to determine his future in the Ranger Corps...

...After I had incarcerated him within his Heavy Ball, the Rangers would seize that prison from me, before releasing Damascus from it above the ocean's continental slope; and then they would just let that heavy Onix drown at the bottom of the sea, dozens of kilometers away from any shore that could provide him with a timely escape.

Not even miraculous Damascus could hope to survive the Ranger's tried and true Onix execution design. It had never even come close to failing, and it never would.

-But there was no way in hell that I was going to let the Rangers kill this unique snake in coldblooded vengeance.

 _I would die before I let that shit happen._

"ALEXANDRIA! BEETHOVEN'S FIFTH, STAT!" I whipped out my Tact. pad and hoofed it into the raging Serpents' lethal dance with that dramatic four-note opening motif heralding the buildup of something awful.

-Oh, what a great way to ruin one of my favorite songs.

This lovely tune was probably gonna be the last song that Damascus ever heard.

I ducked beneath a Gyarados's massive fluked tail, rolled my ass under a pair of Dragon-Snakes' colliding bellies, dodged one livid blue mouth striking at anything that dared to move-

-Just to find Damascus's head before the Blackhats did.

"Damascus, listen to me!"

The angry King of Mount Silver was shaking with the effort of restraining these two powerful snakes in his coils. Damascus didn't even look at me when I clambered up onto his cheek. All hell was breaking loose around us as the two Gyarados raged against the earth itself for their very lives, and their each and every deafening bellow was punctuated by a ground shaking crash as the massive blue beasts slammed what few parts of their physiology had been spared the imprisoning coils of Damascus into the soil.

"DAMASCUS! PLEASE! STOP THIS!" My face was right in front of his massive milky-blue clouded eye, consuming his entire left cone of vision as I tried to get that featureless misty orb to focus on me.

"DAMASCUS, COME ON! LET THEM GO! JUST LET THEM GO!"

 _-Come on you stupid fucking mentally deranged snake…_

"YOU KNOW WHO I AM! REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE!"

And those desperate words…

...Finally penetrated the King of Mount Silver's lost mind…

...And my Damascus…

...Came back to me with a start.

"Loosen up! You need to loosen up!"

I could just see the faint silhouette of a cloudy pupil focusing on me when I gave that order. Damascus heard my voice. Gramps was able to remember who I was to him…

...And in doing so…

...Damascus was able to remember who he was to me.

"Just let them go, Damascus. Slowly."

Those coils started loosening, and both Wyrms struggled to pull themselves free.

"-Hold up! Wait until the Blackhats calm them down!"

I'd reclaimed control of my snake again. I'm leaving the rest up to you, Captain Lewis.

I was gasping for breath, hanging onto Damascus's lower jaw while Lieutenant Roscoe and Captain Lewis berated their snakes into a relative calm. They weren't getting crushed anymore, but those two Gyaradosia were itching to murder the Onix that had put them in such a dire situation.

"Okay, Zane. Cut 'em loose." Lieutenant Roscoe gave me the command after roughly two minutes of him yelling at and beating his Tisiphone. Captain Lewis had gotten her Wyrm under control less than half a minute before Lieutenant Roscoe did.

"Okay, Damascus… No one is gonna hurt you now. Let them go." Damascus barely hesitated to heed my gentle command. The odd snake out and the Reigning Champion of the Serpents widened his arches enough for the two Gyaradosia to slither their angry way free.

"Good job, Gramps. Good job." I patted Damascus's lower jaw when he collapsed against the earth, utterly exhausted from his battle with the Blackhats.

" _Warrant Officer-"_

-And that was Captain Lewis walking all over Beethoven just to ruin the moment.

"...Yes sir?" I turned to Captain Lewis with that weary look she hated so much filling my eye. Captain Lewis actually swallowed on sight of my emotionally spent visage.

"...Congratulations. That was a first. Solomon has never lost to an Onix before. You're ready for the Cerulean Gym."

And those stern yet wispy words was all it took to shatter what was left of me.

-I broke down bawling against Damascus's wheezing mouth.

…

"Hey you…"

"..."

"...I know that you can hear me. Wake up."

"..."

"This is no time for your beauty sleep, Vauban. Rise and shine, Ranger."

"..."

"...That's my little girl…"

"..."

"What are those tears for, you goofy shit?"

"..."

"I told you that I'd be here when you woke up. Did you really doubt me?"

"..."

"Easy, Vauban! Easy! Sheezus… Just slow down, girl... Slow down. You're still in recovery."

"..."

"...But you made it. Heh... I knew that you would…"

"..."

"...Sorry to break it to you, Vauban, but you're gonna have to sit the Cerulean Gym out."

"..."

"-Don't look at me like that. You earned your rest. I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for you, girl…"

"..."

"...I said take it easy, Vauban. Your evolution took a lot out of you."

"..."

"What? Didn't you notice? You're an Ivysaur now, Vauban. A fricken Ivysaur…"

"..."

"...Look at you…"

"..."

"...Here my little girl has gone and grown up on me…"

"..."

"...Hey."

"..."

"...Don't you worry, Vauban."

"..."

"No matter how big you get…"

"..."

"...You're always gonna be my little girl…"

…

I left the hermit-tent, and sealed the cooler door behind me. Closing my eyes and pressing my forehead against the cold steel door, I breathed out a shaky sigh.

"...Thank you, Melissa…"

"...Is she okay?" A soft voice asked over my shoulder.

-I might have sniffled a bit before I answered her.

"Yeah… She's back… Vauban's okay… Thank you-"

"-I didn't do it for you." Melissa stated harshly when I turned around to face her.

I closed my eyes again, and waited for the storm of hate to hit me.

"...I did it for Vauban. That poor Ivysaur has no idea what kind of monster she serves."

"...Melissa-"

"-Just shut up, Zane."

I opened my eyes again. One very angry blonde haired beauty was coldly glaring at me in a watery-eyed stare.

-But I could see the struggle in those eyes.

Melissa wanted to hate me.

She was trying her best to loathe my guts…

...But-

"...I don't know what to think of you…" Melissa snapped, that icy visage cracked and fell away from the weeping woman who once again entered my arms.

"...You can hate me, Melissa… I want you to hate me…" I struggled to keep my watery voice firm when I buried my cheek into her crown.

"...But I'll be there for you… If you want me to listen…"

We were both crying again. Both grieving for our Bren.

"...Zane… Did she… Did she ever talk to you… about me?" Melissa shuddered in a gasp.

I choked before I could answer.

"You were the apple of her eye. The one person she held closest to her heart. She missed you, Melissa… She missed you so much…" I was gagging on that memory. The memory of Bren and I after the Nido-pyre…

-I was right there talking to her again, telling her…

...Telling her that it was gonna be alright…

...Promising her that I'd bring her home to her wife…

"...You loved her too, didn't you?"

Melissa was the one supporting me now, as I collapsed with the grief. She lowered me softly to the ground while I gasped in agony for want of breath.

"Zane…"

I couldn't look at her.

-It was all my fault.

It was all my fault that she had died-

 _I had lied to my Bren-_

"...Thank you."

...And those were the last words I heard from Melissa…

...For a painfully long while…

…

And here we were.

Eight days since the Kadabra incident.

Three days past the date commemorating Damascus when he had damn near killed a pair of Blackhat trained Gyaradosia.

Two days after Vauban had woken up.

-A fucking crowd of journalists milling around Chris Lebreau's independant film crew.

Captain Lewis sitting in the stands, the sole Blackhat in this entire complex.

A drove of Ranger Vets and their families occupying the better half of the bleachers.

-Misty's fan club filling out the remaining seats…

...And another two live film crews, representing national news syndicates, both hand picked for me by my bestest redheaded fuck buddy herself; Misty Willows.

The stage was set.

-And the Queen of the Cerulean ring had just publically accepted my challenge.

The crowd's roar was deafening.

"AD-HONOR-RUM, AD-HONOR-RUM, AD-HONOR-RUM!" My Greenback Veteran cheerleading squad drowned out the squeals and shrieks of Misty's fan club with our call sounding out loud and clear in a clandestine chant, all accompanied by the timed stomping of hundreds of Ranger boots.

I couldn't believe that this League match had warranted a withdrawal from the Veterans' Sacred Vault of Leave. Taking a day off from active service to spectate a Gym battle would have been akin to high treason under normal circumstances…

"Well, Zane _Bastard…_ " Misty was loving the legal public use of my last name.

-These were far from normal circumstances.

The Rangers had left the frontlines to root for their solo act in the League.

"TEAR HER TO THE GROUND, BASTARD!"

-That particular group of Vets were also loving my last name.

Misty was smiling through the Veteran's interruption with that mischievous twinkle in her eye.

"...I do hope that you have the stomach for this round of _Omakase…_ "

-Really? Girl, that was almost _two weeks_ ago.

Have I ever mentioned that Misty is the single most vindictive broad that I have ever met?

"Fuck. I wasn't the one who choked on the third course."

-Fuck your broadcasting rules of political correctness.

Cause I'm the Fucking Bastard.

-I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about cursing over the Gym's PA system during a live broadcast.

" _WHOOOO!"_

-And I think the crowd likes it when I talk dirty anyways.

Boy, oh boy.

The Tomboy Mermaid's grin was turning something ugly.

I on the other hand, had both hands cordially held behind my back, bouncing on the balls of my feet while wearing the most innocently charming smile that could ever be fashioned on a human face.

-What's the matter, Misty?

You mean to tell me that this isn't foreplay?

Misty tossed off her skintight red bathrobe, and revealed that smoking body clad only in a yellow two-piece string bikini, before the tomboy Mermaid rolled that redhead of hers and starting performing her limbering up routine for her fans.

-That girl knew how to put on a show, I can give her that much.

"We'll see who's choking on the third course this time, _Bastard…_ "

More cheers from her fans, and a chorus of wolf whistles from the berets.

"-Now Gym Leader, a little humility please…" My smug as fuck voice dared to drop that line over the PA.

The berets started laughing their asses off when the cameras zoomed in on the scandalized expression plastered across Willow's face.

Don't look at me like that, Misty…

-I'm not the one selling my body for a little bit of fame.

"-CONTENDER TO THE LEAGUE! YOU HAVE EXTENDED A CHALLENGE TO THE REIGNING CERULEAN CITY GYM LEADER, MISTY WILLOWS! MISTY WILLOWS HAS ACCEPTED YOUR CHALLENGE! THE CASCADE BADGE HANGS IN THE BALANCE! DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO CLAIM YOUR TROPHY?!" The League commentator interrupted the exchange before Misty and I could make the challenge anymore lewd.

"Does the Gym Leader have what it takes to stop me from claiming her Badge?" I asked, my voice still carrying that smirking tone. The Rangers started howling over the boos of Misty's fanclub.

 _-Do it for the audience._

The very first rule of the League.

"I'm going to drown you out of the League for good, Bastard. Let's see how long you can tread water." Misty was answering my jab in kind.

"Well shit. I still don't have those swim trunks, Gym Leader. Can I swim in your pool without them again?"

-Answer that one, Misty.

The crowd was going nuts. Every girl in Misty's fan club went livid, and every eyebrow on the males shot straight up against the ceiling. The Rangers started moshing against the Gym tank's glass wall, despite the fact that we hadn't even begun the fight yet.

-But that nasty shaking red face and those perfect teeth chattering at me from across the Gym was the best compliment yet.

Was that below the belt, Misty? I'm so sorry about that.

- _Snort._

Getting under Misty's skin was a whole hell of a lot easier after you had already been in her pants.

Our mon hadn't even been selected yet, and I was already playing the Gym Leader for a fool.

"CONTENDERS! CHOOSE YOUR POKEMON!" The commentator decided to hurry things along before I made an even bigger scene. The Battle Screen lit up over the Tank, and Misty's six-monster Intermediate-Two roster hit the feed alongside my four-Ranger League roster.

My Ivysaur, Vauban. My Magikarp, Darwin. My Growlithe, Cortez. My Onix, Damascus.

And my four mon were squaring off against…

Ray, the Starmie. Overture, the Politoed. Piddles, the Quagsire. Shellshock, the Blastoise. Gale, the Dragonair. And Brutus, the Croconaw.

Which three would Misty pick to battle the three I chose?

Well, nobody would know until the respective contenders hit the field.

Misty was scanning my four for the most likely threat to her ring. That distinction obviously fell to Vauban, who's Saboteur arsenal could poison the aquatic half of Misty's ring. Not one of her mon would take well to a lethal toxin dispersing throughout their crucial environment. Vauban alone could strip Misty of her home field advantage…

...But the problem was?

...Vauban was currently sitting cozy in a Pokemart's rear facility cooler, resting in a trough of chilled mud; watching this very Gym match's live broadcast on a television that cool little Ricky had set up for her in the hermit-tent.

-But Misty didn't know that.

And she was going to arrange her lineup based off her mon's amphibious combat capabilities in anticipation for a ground pounder's fight.

I ruled out the Starmie at once. They couldn't even breathe on land, unless they utilized their psionics to lift a sphere of water around them first-

-Which was an outlawed tactic in restricted Intermediate-Two competition.

But the other five members on Misty's Intermediate-Two roster?

Everyone of them could fight on land as well as they could in the water.

-But one particular mon of Misty's caught my eye, and held it with dread.

That one mon could tactically counter my entire Vauban free roster with stupid ease.

I'd seen this species of mon in action before…

-And it could wreak absolute havoc on anything standing at the shoreline from the relative safety of the water.

And only one member of my team could even swim out and engage it in its element…

 _-Darwin, my useless fucking Magikarp._

...Who I had to add to my Gym roster simply because without my Vauban…

...My team had been reduced to the bare minimum junior competition required threesome.

But even so, picking that one tactical mon was huge gamble for Misty to take.

If Vauban turned her swimming pool into a septic tank, then this big bruiser was going to have to fight on dry land…

...And even the dumbest League Analyst knew that this mon wouldn't fair well in a one on one with Damascus on terra firma.

And that Onix was definitely gonna be on my three mon team.

-Cause no one on earth is stupid enough to bring a Magikarp to their Gym Challenge, right?

 _...Sigh…_

I entered the Challenger's ring kiosk, before turning to my stage console, and then I punched in the three names that would comprise my Cerulean Gym challenge team.

Damascus, Cortez, and _Darwin…_

-Only a miracle could possibly save us from certain defeat.

Misty had already entered her three mon crew, and now the Battle Screen lit up with the Indigo League crest, before a flash of lighting threw Misty's and my Trainer Licenses against one another for the whole of the world to see.

All of this theatrical nonsense for pleasing the audience…

-Oh well. I guess that the League really isn't for the competitors anymore...

One dramatic bolt of lighting later, and Misty's portrait was arranged above mine on the Battle Screen. Then three red and white spheres lit up in the lower corner of either portrait.

The match had begun.

And now, it was time for the first round of the Cerulean City Gym battle.

 _-The same battle that would make the Fucking Bastard infamous throughout all of the Indigo League…_

…

COMPETITORS! THIS IS ROUND ONE! MISTY WILLOWS, AS THE REIGNING CERULEAN GYM LEADER, PRESENT YOUR LEAD!" The commentator's voice drummed up the excitement, and I could feel myself growing more nervous by the second. Sticking to the League codes, Gym Leader Misty sent her mon out first; so as to grant the advantage of species recognition to her challenger.

And what a mon it was…

Four narrow meters of blue-backed and white-bellied limbless eel. Two glassy azure beads on the very end of its tail. One practically insignificant fourteen centimeter long shearing horn resting between the winglike white crown of its external gills. And a misleadingly serene expression portrayed by those giant soft black eyes.

"-AND OUR GYM LEADER HAS CHOSEN GALE TO LEAD THE ASSAULT ON THE BASTARD'S INCURSION!"

"The fucking Dragonair. Could you have been anymore obvious?" I muttered to myself.

 _Gale,_ Misty's best bet at an anti-Saboteur lead, was sent straight into the dry portion of the Gym for the optimum Ivysaur slaying position.

I had a sneaking suspicion that Misty had chosen this mon to keep my absent Vauban off the field, simply because we both knew that my Ivysaur would get nuked by that smooth bodied Serpent before Vauban could even fire a flare off. Dragons are nasty fucking beasts with their innate perchant for excessive violence, and if that strip of mucus coated muscle got its prehensive coils around my Vauban…

-Then no amount of Waterloo enhanced speed was going to save my little girl from a Dragon's fury, and no amount of weaponized toxins were going to weather down a Dragon's wrath fast enough to keep that slippery eel from tearing my Vauban into shreds.

Damascus would have been the obvious Dragon counter from me, but then Misty could've just called a substitution in the first round and rotated the field to one of her nimble fighters in order to escape Damascus's heavy blows. Though truthfully, Misty only had one mon that could even hurt Damascus…

All Misty needed to do in order to counter Grandpa snake was relocate any three of her mon into the water before my Onix could crush them, and then I would be forced to substitute the landlocked Damascus out with another one of my mon just to keep the battle going.

Gale was the perfect choice for Misty's lead. Her Dragonair could threaten Vauban off the scene, or force me to drain my three substitutions in the vain effort of keeping pace with the Tomboy Mermaid on her homefield.

So I had to do something unpredictable.

-I was gonna have to start gambling in the first round.

"Cortez, report!" One battle hardened G.I. Growlithe answered the call, and stood face to face with a bloody Dragonair that outclassed him in power and dexterity…

-But Cortez still maintained an advantage in range and speed.

In other words, I hadn't deployed a counter to Misty's Dragonair.

I had as good as offered a compromise. Both Misty and I could commit these two mon to the fight, and neither one of us had a clue which one would come out on top.

"-AND WHAT A PECULIAR CHOICE! ZANE BASTARD OF THE RANGER CORPS HAS ANSWERED MISTY'S DRAGONAIR WITH CORTEZ! CAN THAT UNEVOLVED GROWLITHE RUN WITH THE DRAGONS YET?!"

"Mic test. Can you hear me, Cortez?" I pressed a finger against the combat headset that Captain Lewis had provided me with, a gift from the Blackhat's own armory.

My normally silent hound woofed an affirmative.

"WE'RE ONLY SECONDS AWAY FROM THE OPENING ROUND! LET'S SEE IF THE RANGER'S MARTIAL TRAINING CAN COMPETE WITH A CHAMPIONSHIP TRAINER'S REGIMEN!"

-The Rangers were booing out the Commentator for his questionable choice in preparation comparisons.

I took a look at the Battle Screen's timer. I had fifteen seconds to debrief Cortez before Misty and I started swapping blows.

"Good. Now listen up. Dragons. They get pissed. Easily. We're using that. Annoy the fuck out of him, but don't commit to an assault until it stops listening to Misty-"

-Eight seconds…

"-Do not let it go into the water. That is priority."

-Four seconds…

"And do not get caught in those coils. You have the speed. Use it."

...And...

"COMPETITORS! THE FIRST ROUND HAS BEGUN! FIGHT!"

"GIVE IT HELL, CORTEZ!"

"GALE, EAT THAT LITTLE DOG!"

 _Here we go…_

Gale lunged right at my pooch with a warbling moan. That Dragonair's hidden mouth unfurled into a drooping downturned oral hood of fleshy lips, and the pharynx of a Petromyzontiform telescoped out into a hideous pink cup of barbed dirty teeth, before Gale slithered towards Cortez with that grotesque maw rattling.

"EVADE THAT WORM, AND BURN ITS ASS IN THE RETREAT!"

Cortez barely managed to skirt that eel's rattling mouth, but Gale didn't even give Cortez the required time to open his catalases for a fiery discharge. My heart leapt into my throat when that Dragonair rounded on a vertebrae and struck Cortez with a maddened shriek.

I saw blood dripping from Cortez's scar when my growling dog fought off the Dragon's clinging mouth.

"-AND FIRST BLOOD GOES TO GALE! CAN THAT GROWLITHE EVEN HOPE TO DEFEAT A FUTURE CHAMPIONSHIP DRAGONITE?!"

No good.

Gale was a lot faster on land than I had anticipated.

"Cortez, don't use your flames unless you're out of his striking range! You're gonna have to cook him from a distance!" I shouted into the mic. Cortez started taking some calming breaths while the Dragonair opposing him fell back into coiled pile of nasty.

"What's he up to, Cortez-?"

Then I saw the arcs jumping between Gale's feathery external gills.

"-CORTEZ, GET OUT OF THERE NOW!"

Cortez saw it coming before I even started yelling at him. A blinding discharge of electricity jolted to a pointed stone jutting a mere eighth meter away from where my dog had been previously standing.

"-AND IT LOOKS LIKE CORTEZ'S TRAINING IN THE RANGERS CORPS HAS PREPARED HIM FOR THE STORM!"

-Oh shit.

 _Gale could do that as a Dragonair?!_

 _-Their species shouldn't even have access to their electrical attacks until they evolved into Dragonites!_

"Enzo Davinci knows how to make a phenomenal Dragonair, doesn't he Zane?" Misty's coy voice ended in a mischievous giggle over the Gym's PA system. And she was smiling something wicked when the stunned pallor washed over my face.

-A Chimera Dragonair.

We were in trouble now.

"-HOW WILL ZANE AND CORTEZ ADAPT TO THIS WYRM?!"

"Scratch range, Cortez! You're gonna have to get in close-"

-An even bigger charge of arcs began forming between those feathery gills.

"-RETREAT! START RUNNING AND STAY LOW!"

Enzo Davinci…

 _-I'm really hating your guts right now._

…

"-AND GALE HAS CORTEZ ON THE RUN! LOOK AT THAT LITTLE GROWLITHE GO!"

Cortez was trucking it. We were trying to utilize the broken terrain of Misty's dry ring for drawing off the lighting by using both the elevation and the shape of the field's stones as conductors, but this required some seriously quick calculations on both mine and Cortez's parts.

I was eyes on the Dragonair, calling out Gale's movements and the headings of his electrical discharges, while simultaneously trying to plot a course through the dry ring's topography for Cortez.

And Cortez?

-He was the sorry son of a bitch trying outrun a lighting storm and evade the Serpent flinging it at him, all while his desperate CO shouted coordinates and maneuvers into his ear.

"-LOOK OUT RANGERS! GALE'S COMING IN FOR THE SWEEP!"

-And that damn League commentator wasn't helping things.

"-He's ten meters off your six, charging up a volley!"

"-YOU CAN RUN CORTEZ! BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE!"

"-There's a gap in the rocks eighteen meters on your one-o'clock; use it for cover!"

"-LOOK THAT GROWLITHE MOVE! UNBELIEVABLE-!"

"-You're too high on the ground, Cortez! ROLL-ROLL-ROLL!"

"-OH, YOU'VE GONE AND WOKEN THE DRAGON NOW, CORTEZ!"

Oh dear God…

 _-That bolt was fucking huge._

Cortez rolled into a ditch just in the knick of time, and that massive arc of lightning crashed into the high rising stones above Cortez's ditch.

"-I DON'T BELIEVE IT! GALE JUST CAN'T PIN THIS DOG DOWN-!"

"Get to low ground now! He's gonna have to warm up his Sach's organ after that one! You have time to relocate- SHIT! HE'S RIGHT ABOVE YOU! BREAK LEFT! BREAK LEFT!"

"-AND THERE'S STILL NO STOPPING EITHER ONE OF THEM!"

That fucking Dragonair wasn't giving us a moment to breath.

Fucking Dragons, man…

-They just won't quit for anything.

"Having problems, Ranger?" Enter the cute nasally voice of Misty Willows over the PA system.

-But it was gonna take a lot more than some fluttering eyelashes from the Gym Leader to distract me from my duty to my dog.

"I could go easy on you, if you ask nicely…" Misty simpered my way.

"-GALE IS WITHDRAWING! WHAT IS MISTY PLANNING FOR HER DRAGONAIR NOW?!"

"Cortez! he's falling back to the shore! You have to stop him now! Do whatever it takes!"

"-AND CORTEZ IS GOING ON THE OFFENSIVE! WILL THAT DOG REACH GALE BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE?!"

"...All you have to do is _kiss it_ , Zane…" Misty made a V with her index and middle finger, before waggling her tongue between the crooked digits at me.

"-Sorry, but I don't like the taste of fish! CORTEZ, LIGHT 'EM UP!"

This would go down in the League archives as one of the most vulgar Gym Battles of all time.

Okay Gale…

-We've heard Chimera's thunder.

...Now reap Waterloo's fire.

…

Cortez was bred and trained in the exact same militarized facilities that Vauban was. Waterloo. Chimera's warmon production division. And Waterloo had designed their Hunter-Killers from the ground up for two purposes.

One: _Hunting._

Cortez had a snout filled with four times the Growlithe's natural quota of olfactory receptors. A Waterloo Hunter-Killer could fucking smell a Fearow's fart in an atmospheric dilution of _one part per ten-thousand gallons._

 _-At sea level._

And that was just the nose of Waterloo's Hunter-Killers. Their ears are every bit as sensitive as their noses are, and the neural pathways that links their sense of sight, sound, and smell to the brain are six times more extensive and robust than nature's standard issued Growlithe.

If it makes a noise, a smell, or leaves a visible signature…

-Then a Waterloo Hunter-Killer can track and find it through almost any terrain.

And now we come to the second ingredient on Waterloo's Hunter-Killer recipe.

- _Killing._

 _..._ That should go without saying.

Just as watered-down civilian market friendly Chimera Industries had gone ahead and supercharged their competitive Dragonair's physiology by genetically activating the latent organs required for deploying their evolved form's high voltage electrical discharges…

 _-Well..._

...You really, really, _really_ don't want to know what Chimera's military production division went ahead and did to their Growlithes.

-Waterloo.

They've been proudly providing Indigo's servicemen with top-of-the-line monster derived death and destruction for the last eight fucking years.

...

"RED ROVER, RED ROVER, YOU HAVE CLEARANCE, RED ROVER!" I roared it into the mic.

-I really shouldn't do that to Cortez. Waterloo might have given him the capability to expel an atmosphere ionizing jet of flames at a temperature of four-thousand degrees celsius…

...But Waterloo never really figured out how to keep those insane temperatures from injuring the Growlithes that could produced them.

"START CHARGING THE CORE!"

-And there was another reason as for why Cortez's white hot flames really weren't feasible for combat situations. Well, actually two other reasons.

One, it took Cortez roughly forty seconds to fully oxidize the tissue linings on his catalases, and Cortez couldn't actually move all that fast when suffering from the breathless agony of a melting throat.

Two, the range. Cortez's standard wide dispersal gouts covered a maximum area of around six meters in circumference in a four meter long conical projection. But these particular flames? They came out in a coherent burst of blinding white, measuring only eight centimeters in diameter and covering all of a measly meter in distance.

But with only a sustained burn time of three seconds at continuous exposure?

…My Cortez could generate enough thermal concentration to melt a neat little hole clean through one meter of solid steel.

-Yep.

A Dragonair is made of meat, not steel.

How long do you think that Gale's mucus hide was gonna last against that?

"-WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THAT DOG?! DID GALE SNEAK A HIT IN?!"

-No. Cortez was doing that to himself under my orders.

Cortez started retching the very second he put his Waterloo genes to work by dropping every biological restriction that evolution had ever imposed on him. My dog was already hunched up with the pain, and I could see the blood dripping from his mouth as he broke into a staggered charge for Gale after the five second primer.

"-CAN CORTEZ EVEN HOPE TO DRAG THAT DRAGON AWAY FROM THE WATER?!"

Gale was idly slithering for the aquatic section, completely oblivious to the hound baring down on him. Which was anything but good.

"Cortez, you have to rile him up!"

That Dragonair was reluctantly breaking off from a fight with Cortez on the orders of its Trainer, but there's no such thing as a domesticated Dragon, and try as they might…

-Chimera just can't figure out how to suppress the hyperviolence response that dictates the entire Dragon Family's existence.

"-AND THE CLOSE QUARTERS DUAL HAS RESUMED!"

Cortez caught up with Gale just as that Dragonair dipped its head in the water. One canine snapping at the Dragon's beaded tail triggered that angry eel's natural response. Lashing out of the water to take a chunk out of Cortez with that disturbing mouth, Gale came up just a few centimeters short.

"-THAT DOG CAN MOVE!"

"Keep him busy, Cortez!"

Gale started spitting in rage as he heeded Misty's radioed order to retreat into the water, but Cortez was gonna inspire that unstable Dragon with a little bit of disobedience by sinking his Growlithe fangs right into Gale's white belly and chewing off a piece of takeout.

"-AND CORTEZ FINALLY LANDS A BLOW! WHAT A DEVIOUS LITTLE HOUND!"

That squirming hunk of Dragon gut dangling from my hound's mouth was the final straw for Gale.

Fuck the League rules.

Fuck all these cameras.

Fuck Misty.

This little pooch was gonna fucking die.

"-AND WHAT'S THIS?! HAS CORTEZ BITTEN OFF MORE THAN HE CAN CHEW?!"

 _-Which was absolutely perfect._

Why I'd be saying that about a Dragon losing its head on my mon would gall anyone spectating this match, but that Dragon's ludicrously savage strike was exactly the kind of excuse I needed to permit for Cortez's Waterloo tactic.

…

You see, this was a restricted challenge. I was entering the Cerulean ring without a hope in hell of victory, or even a vague League clause to cheat with. I was at a significant disadvantage, and I had to neuter my team's potential just for the security of ensuring their continued lives regardless of a loss. I didn't want to lose a single one of monsters that I'd come to call family, and I was willing to get off my Fucking Bastard high horse to make sure that my family was still intact tomorrow morning.

What I had ordered Cortez to do was illegal in restricted format. Our overheat tactic was completely against the rules. But there was one little clause in section thirteen that designated a circumstance where the rules of a restricted battle could be rendered legally void.

-If one of the participants lost control of their Pokemon in a restricted format…

...And if that Pokemon tried to kill its opponent or any non-combatants in the vicinity…

...Then the opposing Trainer was permitted to do _anything_ in order to save their own Pokemon or any spectators from the noncompliant Pokemon's assault.

I could have even deployed Damascus right alongside Cortez, and ordered them both to kill that rampaging Dragonair…

...And Misty would still be held liable for any damages that were accrued after that act.

There's a reason for why only the stupid crazy or the stupid brave train Dragon-types.

You may earn a Dragon's grudging loyalty by violently proving to it that you're the boss…

...But you will never be able to dominate them.

…

Gale had lost it. That Dragon wasn't listening to Misty's orders, and that was made as plain as day to me with a look over to her side of the field. Misty was screaming obscenities and death threats at her Dragonair through their closed channel, but Gale couldn't give a shit less.

-Pain.

It's not the same thing to Dragons as it is to you and me.

When most living organisms wind up injured in a precarious situation, the fight or flight instinct triggers. That's a basic hereditary response genetically encoded within the vast majority of all living things.

-But not Dragons.

They have only one programmed response to pain.

 _-Kill._

Dragons don't back down even when they're losing a fight or completely outgunned. It's the trait that makes their Family so dangerous to train, and ensures that only the strongest members of their species will ever make it to breeding age. In the Dragon world, to lose a fight is to die, and to win a fight is to kill. There is no in between. Even the Nidoking will turn prey loose if the quarry proves that it's too big of threat to handle, but not the Dragons. They are hard coded killers, and the only thing that will ever stop a committed Dragon from murdering you is their own death. Humanity has tried to override that draconic code for as long as there has been Trainers on this earth, but we've made next to nothing in headway when it comes to taming the most rabid of beasts.

-A point that was being proven in the Cerulean City Gym's ring as Gale put everything he had into killing my Cortez.

...And Gale was coming uncomfortably close to putting my dog down for good.

"GALE HAS GONE APE! MISTY MUST NOT BE ANY HAPPIER THAN HIM-"

-Misty wasn't ordering Gale to do that. Gale was succumbing to his feral Dragon side, and that wild Wyrm was even scarier riled up than he was under Misty's guidance.

My hand went straight for Damascus's Heavy Ball when Gale took a bite out of Cortez's ribs, and left a bleeding gash across half of Cortez's scar.

"-OH, THAT HAD TO HURT! ANOTHER DECISIVE BLOW SCORED BY GALE!"

-My hound was in a bad way.

I was maintaining the countdown in my head, while simultaneously denying the urge to send out Damascus and draw both knives, before advancing in an all out assault staged to save my doomed dog. But we only had twelve seconds to go before Cortez redlined his catalases and burnt that Dragon to a crisp. And I needed to pretend like Gale's outburst was perfectly acceptable.

-Because if I did call up Damascus and rush the field to save Cortez preemptively…

...My Cerulean Gym match would be called off, and I would have to earn the Cascade Badge in later challenge.

But we had all pieces that we needed right here, right now in the Cerulean City Gym.

We had the media's attention, and we had the support required to a make a scene for all of the League's devotees.

We couldn't afford to risk losing it all to a rescheduled match.

-And anyways?

Despite the situation developing on the Gym ring's shoreline?

 _Everything was going exactly to plan._

"-LOOK AT THAT! GALE HAS FINALLY PINNED CORTEZ DOWN! THIS ROUND IS OVER-!"

-Right up until Gale got a coil around my agony disorientated dog, and followed it up with a full on constriction.

"CORTEZ!" I was screaming into both the mic and across the field.

-That Dragon was breaking his ribs, make no mistake. A Growlithe isn't supposed to bulge and twist like that, and now that he had Cortez pinned down, Gale was moving in for the kill.

"-WHAT'S GOING ON DOWN THERE?! HAS GALE-"

-Five seconds.

My hand raised Damascus's Heavy Ball to shoulder level.

"-COMPLETELY-"

-Four seconds.

Doug's knife was drawn, my designated Challenger's kiosk field access gate was already behind me, and the rough terrain of the Gym ring's dry portion was crunching under my running boots.

"-LOST-"

-Three seconds.

Misty was chewing on her nails as the tears rolled down her face. The Gym Leader had given up the instant Gale's first coil had wrapped around my dog. She couldn't stop her Dragonair, and now Misty was just waiting for Cortez and Gale to die.

"-HIS-"

-Two seconds.

Gale lunged towards my constricted dog with that horrid mouth, and that fucking Dragon wrapped his sinewy jawless maw around Cortez's bugeyed face.

"-HEAD!?"

-One second.

...An unusual glow started forming from the inside of Gale's throat, and that same light started illuminating the pink membrane sucking down Cortez's head.

-Time.

"CARBONIZE THAT DRAGONAIR NOW!" I roared into my headset, praying that this wasn't some twisted illusion.

And thank you, Waterloo…

You twisted sons of bitches gave my hound exactly what he needed to dispel all of my doubts.

"-WHAT IN THE SANE HELL-!?"

Gale cut Cortez loose faster than you can blink. That Dragon was a bloody burning mess-

...And my dog…

 _-My dog was fucking pissed._

Fuck the broken bones. Fuck the bleeding gashes. Fuck near death experiences. Fuck the weird ass hairdo that Gale's saliva had left him with.

- _Fuck Dragons._

Cortez was letting Gale have it, and was looking mighty vindictive when he turned that Dragon's slimy hide into charcoal.

"-IS THAT EVEN LEGAL?!"

Damascus was out in a flash, and the League Watchmen hit the field with nets and tazing rods.

"ABSTAIN AND FALL BACK TO DAMASCUS, CORTEZ!" I shouted that order as loudly as I could.

Damascus knew what to do on the spot. His addled brain could still put that Bastion Class lesson of two and two together, and somehow get four.

My Bastion Class Onix turned himself into a living bunker, while Cortez cut his stream of nuclear hot flames short, before making a gimpy dash for Damascus's coils.

-And that fucked up, half charred Dragon was in screaming pursuit of my wounded dog within seconds.

 _Gale was beyond livid._

Cortez barely made it to the safety of Damascus's bulwark when Grandpa snake closed the gap, and then just let Gale rail on his unbreakable hide.

There was no way in hell that the Watchmen were gonna be able to safely wrangle that feral Dragon off the field without beating it into a crippled state first.

"-Are we still filming this?" The commentator had forgotten to take his finger off the switch.

-Yep. This is League sponsored Dragon abuse being filmed live.

Fortunately for Misty's bank account…

She wouldn't have to purchase a replacement Dragonair from Chimera Industries after the League Watchmen were finished working Gale over.

Damascus's indestructible walls gave the Watchmen the time they required to violently restrain Misty's savage Dragonair without the need to resort to something that might have resulted in permanent damage.

The Watchmen dragged that bloodthirsty Dragonair off the field, and even though Gale could barely move for all the punishment they'd put him through…

-That Dragonair was still doing his damndest to kill them all.

Fucking Dragons, man…

...I can't believe that we put them into Pokeballs…

I collected my wounded dog from grandpa Damascus, before leaving my rumbling snake on the field, and then I returned to my kiosk with Cortez bleeding in my arms.

"Right. So does that mean that I won the first round?" I called out over the PA system with the most casual tone that I could muster.

I even managed to shoot the Fucking Bastard's patented charming smile into the lens of every Camera crew.

-Take a hint, Misty…

 _I'm offering you one hell of a mercy._

"...O-of course you won. Anyone could see _that-_ " Misty's feeble response over the PA system was punctuated with a nervous giggle.

You could have heard a pin dropping in that ring.

The entire Gym was _dead_ silent.

-I had just won the first round by a technicality and an absolute sham perpetrated by both myself and the Cerulean City Gym Leader.

 _-And we weren't fooling anyone._

But then…

"..."

What was that sound, growing louder by the second?

" _Ad-honor-rum._ "

"Ad-honor-rum."

"Ad-Honor-Rum!"

" _AD-HONOR-RUM, AD-HONOR-RUM, AD-HONOR-RUM!"_

Oh…

...That's just my fan club.

-The Ranger Corps.

"AD HONOREM!" I roared it into the PA system at the top of my formidable range…

 _-And everyone in the stands stood up with an earsplitting cheer._

Do it for the audience.

 _-It all makes sense now._

"ARE WE GONNA OPEN UP ROUND TWO YET?! OR DO I HAVE TO COMMENTATE FOR THE CERULEAN CITY GYM?!" I shouted out, and another incredible cheer just about floored me with its volume alone.

"Well Ranger, I rather like my job, so you'll have to wait till I retire to even apply for the honor of commentating in the Cerulean City Gym. So stay outta my way, _Bastard._ ROUND TWO IS ON IN TWO MINUTES! COMPETITORS! TAKE YOUR PLACES IN THE RING!" The League commentator finally remembered his voice.

We were back in business.

"Cortez, you are benched for the remainder of the match. You did me proud, dog. You did me proud." I ran my bare hand through shaken Cortez's saliva afro, and waved the waiting medical staff over to my beaten dog.

When they carried Cortez out on a stretcher, that scarred up dog fixed both of his mismatched eyes on me…

-And Cortez manage to give me that trademarked smug look of his.

"Rest easy, pooch. We'll take care of the rest." I told Cortez over the mic, and then I switched the channel to another private designation.

" _Damascus?"_

 _RUMBLE._ I could hear him from across the Gym.

"-It's all your show now, old man. Don't let me down."

And with those words, my bigass beautiful snake took his shining place at the center field, while the film crew's spotlights started painting those grainy golden whorls...

...And a hush came across the yammering crowd when my gorgeous Onix craned his neck over the bloody mess that Gale had left on the shoreline…

-And then Damascus slammed his head into that Dragon's creeping bloodstain hard enough to rattle the far off occupied bleachers.

"-THAT IS ONE POWERFUL SNAKE!"

-Obviously, mister commentator.

My Damascus lifted his blood painted face from the sand, and glared across the aquatic portion to meet the eyes of the Cerulean City Gym Leader…

-And then my Damascus let loose the longest, deepest _RUMBLE_ that I'd ever heard him make yet.

 _...What the hell is wrong with my snake?_

I don't think that I'll ever really figure Damascus out.

-And that's just perfect as far as I'm concerned.

"It seems that your Onix has taken a disliking to me, Zane…" Misty's coy voice was back on the PA system.

-Well, you are the stupidly ambitious redhead who's crazy fucking Dragonair tried to kill Damascus's squadmate, so…

"That's not a good thing, Gym Leader. That's not a good thing at all." Listen to the evil smugness in my voice.

"-Just look at that Onix…"

-Even the League commentators see something new and breathtaking every once in awhile.

The crowd was drinking in my gorgeous snake, and even after his psychotic self-applied gory warpaint display…

-Damascus still looked like a new World Wonder, glimmering all gold and pearl at the water's edge.

"Well then… let's see here…" Misty chewed her lip as she considered her next move.

In Intermediate-Two and above, the Gym Leader only had to reveal their lead to the challenger. After that, it was all fair game. Misty could choose whatever she wanted after I had already revealed my hand in Damascus.

But I still had all three substitutions, and for all Misty knew…

My final mon was Vauban the Saboteur, fully capable of crippling her team and stripping her of the home field advantage; which would pave the way for mighty Damascus, who could wipe them all out on the Gym's dry portion of the field without even breaking a sweat.

From the League Analysts' perspective, my choice in Damascus for the second round was well founded. By League code regarding Gym terrain, Misty would have to deploy her mon onto the dry portion's halfway point to 'even out' the field for terra-bound Damascus. After the release though, Misty could order her mon into water, and I had only one chance at stopping it from reaching the aquatic portion.

To Misty's eyes, I was trying to bait her into committing to her Onix counter; just so that I could call a substitution, and safely swap in Vauban to ruin the Gym Leader's only weapon against Damascus.

-But as I've said before?

Vauban wasn't with me.

Darwin was sitting in her rightful seat, and I intended to keep that embarrassing Magikarp hidden for the entire match.

-So this was me bluffing the Gym Leader into sacrificing the number two on her roster.

Because nothing she had could take Damascus out.

-Save for one mon.

And Misty had to keep that one mon safe until she was positive that Vauban wasn't gonna screw it over.

"Brutus, come on out." Misty spoke softly when she called up her two-meter tall Croconaw, and then fixed me with a pleading eye.

"-An… Interesting choice of Pokemon for our Gym Leader. Brutus…" The commentator was baffled at this turn of events, but I sure as hell wasn't.

I understood the message in Misty's eyes.

 _-Don't hurt Brutus too much._

Misty had already accepted a loss to me.

Gale had failed her. Misty had been pivoting on her Dragon's ability to thwart Vauban. A Vauban that I had yet to reveal.

-And I had played the gambling Gym Leader and her unstable Dragon for absolute fools. Misty was so desperate to hold onto the field advantage that she had elected to play her Dragonair against my Growlithe in a coin toss match-up; all in the effort of keeping my Vauban off the field while banking her three substitutions for countering the G.I. Onix and the G.I. Ivysaur.

-And that match-up's coin toss had favored me.

In Misty's mind, I had her pinned no matter what. One substitution could win me the match.

Misty would be damned if she let out her big one. And she'd be damned if she let out her runner up.

-But if Misty knew that my Vauban was absent…

...She wouldn't have sent Brutus out as camera fodder.

-Misty didn't know that I was hinging my victory on one thing.

...If the big one got into the water before Damascus could crush him…

-Then Misty would win with laughable ease.

"-COMPETITORS! THE COUNTDOWN HAS BEGUN! FIFTEEN SECONDS UNTIL THE START OF ROUND TWO!"

"Okay, Damascus. This is gonna be a slaughter. You have that Croconaw soundly trumped in the 'everything' department."

"-BOTH ZANE AND MISTY HAVE LOST ONE OF THEIR POKEMON TO THE FIRST ROUND! BOTH COMPETITORS ARE NOW DOWN TO JUST TWO POKEMON IN THE SECOND ROUND!"

"...And we already pissed off Brock, so we could really use an ally in the League…"

"-I THINK WE ALL KNOW WHO ZANE HAS IN HIS THIRD BALL! THE ONLY QUESTION WE HAVE NOW IS; WHAT WILL MISTY'S STRATEGY BE TO DEFEAT BOTH VAUBAN AND DAMASCUS?!"

"...So this is me asking you really nicely, Gramps… _Please don't kill Brutus…_ "

"-AND WITHOUT FURTHER ADO…"

"-THE SECOND ROUND…"

"-HAS BEGUN! FIGHT!"

"Cut him off, Damascus." I calmly ordered into the mic.

-That poor Croconaw never stood a chance.

Brutus dropped to all fours and made a mad dash for the shore, but grandpa Damascus…

-Wanted to show off with this particular morsel that Misty had offered to him.

Brutus made it all of three meters forward into his aquatic bound charge, before Damascus's powerful tail intercepted the waddling blue Sphenosuchia…

...And then sent Brutus flying bodily into my kiosk's gate, shortly after the projectile Croconaw had travelled roughly half of the ring's entire length through the air at peak velocity.

"-OH MY GOD! BRUTUS-!?" The commentator was staggered for words.

"I FUCKING SAID DON'T KILL HIM!" The Fucking Bastard was roaring into my mic.

Misty jumped out of her horrified skin and clapped both of those shaking hands across her gaping mouth, before the Gym Leader's terrified eyes widened to size of tea cups.

"...Goddamnit, Damascus…" I groaned as an inanimate Brutus flopped off the kiosk gate, and onto the dry portion's craggy floor.

- _RUMBLE._ Damascus said, as he glared across the field at me.

That's Onix for, ' _Fuck you too.'_

"-WE'RE GONNA HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE MEDIC'S VERDICT ON THAT ONE…"

Brutus wasn't getting back up. That gator was deathly still on his belly with those golden eyes of his staring straight ahead, while the medics charged into ring with a fully stacked trauma cart rushing in right behind them. If Damascus had killed that Croconaw in restricted competition…

-Then we were through in the League. Period the knucklefucking end.

Come on Brutus...

...I'm begging you…

...Please...

 _-Please, don't die on me…_

It took the medics all of five seconds to forward their verdict to the commentator.

"-A ONE-HIT KO! THE SECOND ROUND GOES TO ZANE BASTARD AND DAMASCUS IN RECORD SETTING TIME!"

-Well, to be perfectly fair?

Brutus was only in the air for two seconds…

The Rangers were going absolutely _insane_ in the stands. While all of the civis rushed for the tank's glass wall with horror plainly inscribed upon their faces, the entire Ranger section rose to their boots and hurled their berets into the air with a deafening cheer. Then the grinning Greenbacks locked elbows with one another, before the assembled Veterans started rattling the Gym's bleachers to the kicking tune of the can-can.

I couldn't stop laughing at them for all of the world.

-This is why nobody wanted the Ranger Corps to reintegrate with society.

We're just too fucking twisted to give a damn about being obscene.

Brutus was hauled off the field to the finishing notes of the Ranger's ballet, and I looked over to the Battle Screen.

"-IT LOOKS LIKE MISTY WILLOWS COULD BE IN FOR A THRASHING FROM THE RANGER CORPS IF SHE CAN'T GET DAMASCUS OFF THE FIELD!"

-Funny, the commentator started his spiel in round one with absolute confidence in Misty…

"Well, Ranger. I've got one left. Let's see if you have what it takes to earn my Badge." Misty managed a humble smile my way, and I felt a slight twinge of pity for the ambitious Tomboy Mermaid's wounded pride…

...But then I thought about my poor dog bleeding in the Gym's infirmary, and that pity was quickly expelled.

"I'm looking forward to pinning that Badge on my coat. Should we get started then?"

Hint:

- _Shall we wrap this up?_

"I'm not finished yet, Ranger. So don't start patting yourself on the back." Misty found a confident smile to send my way, but I saw the doubt in those eyes.

Misty was all show. She'd found her potential. And now Misty would do anything to hold onto the everything she had earned in that limit seeking pursuit. Misty Willows had pulled the wool over everyone's eyes for as long as she could, but certain walls just kept getting in the Cerulean City Gym Leader's way.

-And here I had truly believed that Misty was a Queen among Maids…

Oh well…

...On with the show.

"-THE THIRD AND FINAL ROUND IS UPON US! ZANE BASTARD HAS TWO POKEMON AND THREE SUBSTITUTIONS REMAINING! MISTY WILLOWS HAS ONLY ONE POKEMON AND THREE SUBSTITUTIONS REMAINING!"

-And Misty still didn't know about the Magikarp in my final Pokeball...

"-THE FINAL ROUND'S CLOCK WILL BEGIN AT THE SOUND OF THE BELL! BOTH COMPETITORS WILL HAVE EXACTLY TWENTY MINUTES TO DEFEAT THE OTHER IN RESTRICTED FORMAT!"

-We didn't need that much time. This round would be decided within the first ten seconds. Either Damascus would crush Misty's final mon and win me the match, or that Testudine bruiser would claim victory for Misty the very instant it entered the water.

"-IF THE CLOCK EXPIRES BEFORE A VICTOR IS DECIDED, THE TRAINER WHO ACCRUED THE FEWEST CASUALTIES WILL WIN BY ATTRITION. COMPETITORS CAN NOW CONVERT THEIR SUBSTITUTIONS INTO THIRTY SECOND TIMEOUTS! DAMASCUS IS LANDLOCKED ONTO THE FIELD! GYM LEADER MISTY WILLOWS! SEND YOUR FINAL POKEMON INTO THE DRY STAGE!"

-Ouch.

...Now I really was feeling bad for Misty.

Misty didn't even call out his name when her final mon started to condense from his Pokeball's discharged materialization beam.

Misty didn't even look like a Gym leader from where I was standing.

Misty Willows looked like a quiet child being forced out onto a theatrical stage.

-All that Mermaid's bravado was melting away.

...Just how many people on this planet of earth hide behind a gilded mask?

Misty's final mon was finally revealed when the white light had faded, and the world could now see the star of Misty's Intermediate-Two team.

-And let me tell you…

...Those turtles don't look so fucking huge when they're standing in the shadow of an Onix.

 _Shellshock._ The only mon from Misty's original Championship team to still draw breath.

Every other member from that first team had perished at Indigo, save for this Blastoise.

...And three attempts at Indigo's League Finals under Misty's ambitious leadership had taken its toll on her very first mon.

-That poor Blastoise was in even worse shape than I was.

...He'd once been blue. You wouldn't know it looking at him now. Lorelai's frostbite had scarred Shellshock's hide into an ugly shade of mottled and veined grey. One of his eyes had been lost to a feral Rhyperior's shearing horn in Victory Road, and the mess left behind by that wound now disfigured the entire right side of Shellshock's face. This Blastoise only had one of his original six front toes still twitching out of the end of his left side's twisted stump of a foreleg, and Shellshock's bowed lower legs were missing most of his splayed flipper feet.

...And the shell?

...That Blastoise's charred shell was a permanently peeling keratin blister, thanks to Agatha's Triplets and their vile Ghostfire.

-This was Misty's once legendary _Shellshock, the Foil_.

His one remaining claim to fame?

-He had lived through it all.

This beast was a Veteran mon.

This Blastoise had seen total war.

He had been torn rent limb from bleeding limb. He had been gored straight through his eye socket and cored through the brain. He had been frozen solid in a flash freeze. And after all of that, he had been tortured in a Distortion sub-cell by a Ghost's unholy flames…

-And Shellshock had lived through it all.

...Yet for whatever reason…

-This Blastoise was still fighting.

Still fighting in a rank well below the station he had earned through hard service, the same station that he had summarily lost to the mutilation he had suffered in the pursuit of a Throne.

-Still fighting for the Trainer who had raised him from a tiny Squirtle.

...Still fighting for the Trainer who had put him through absolute hell…

There's no mask pretty enough in all of the world to hide that sin, Misty…

...And though you may have the conscience to repent for your crime…

...How on earth could anyone possibly forgive you?

...You really are no different from me…

"-LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! WHAT AN HONOR THIS IS! _SHELLSHOCK, THE FOIL_ GOES TO WAR AGAIN!"

-Yeah, everybody look at the big bad Blastoise.

...But can anyone else see that little redheaded girl grieving in his shadow?

"-GIVE SHELLSHOCK A ROUSING APPLAUSE! IT'S BEEN ALMOST FOUR MONTHS SINCE HE TOOK TO THE FIELD LAST, AT THE ONE-THOUSANDTH-AND-SEVENTY-FOURTH INDIGO LEAGUE SEASONAL FINALS IN MISTY'S CLIMACTIC BATTLE AGAINST AGATHA AND HER TRIPLETS!"

-No.

...I didn't think so.

"...Shellshock?"

That Blastoise's one-eyed vacant stare snapped into focus when his Trainer called out his name.

-And nobody even noticed the uncertainty in Misty's voice when she called her very first Pokemon by his name.

"...Are you ready?"

Shellshock's neck twitched in response as the remaining half of his brain struggled to answer Misty with a voice…

Misty's eyes slammed shut.

...I know exactly what she was fighting.

-I know what that war can cost you.

...I know what that scream takes to suppress…

"...Shellshock. One more time…"

You can beat it, Misty...

 _-Just face it one more time..._

"-ONE MORE TIME! EVERYBODY! PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER! GIVE IT UP FOR SHELLSHOCK!"

...That ear shattering cheer sickened me to my core.

-But it was nothing compared to the revulsion that galled me next.

"ONE MORE TIME, SHELLSHOCK! TO BATTLE! SHOW THEM _THE FOIL'S_ MIGHT ONCE MORE!" The Cerulean City Gym Leader shouted out in that decisive and ruthless voice.

-And you just lost it, Misty.

You lost the war.

 _...You're fucking lost._

Shellshock's ruined face began to spasm. That pitiful look of hope in his one eye began to harden.

...And that poor turtle's broken face was twisted by all of the hate.

 _...He hated her..._

"DAMASCUS." My toneless voice emanated from the Gym's PA system speakers.

My white snake turned away from the seizuring Blastoise before him, harkening to the severity of his CO's expressionless voice. Damascus met my iron gaze with those calm milky blue eyes of his.

...I fought back the anger as my teeth chatter against the cold wind born in my breath.

" _DESTROY HER FOIL."_

-Yeah. I saw that look, Misty.

...And I don't even care about it anymore.

-You're lost.

You're fucking lost.

...And you won't ever be found.

Damascus turned back to that wreck of a Blastoise with a vehement rumble.

And then everyone in the bleachers began to scream and cheer...

-When will you people ever see?

This is how we kill our dreams…

...This is how we forfeit to our fates.

"-FIVE SECONDS UNTIL THE FINAL ROUND! EVERYONE-!"

" _-FIVE!"_

The crowd followed the commentator's lead.

" _-FOUR!"_

Shellshock's twitching face solidified into that expression of pure loathing.

" _-THREE!"_

Misty threw her voice in with theirs.

" _-TWO!"_

My single eye swept the entire Gym one last time, drinking in all of this horror and making it the fuel of my ire.

" _-ONE!"_

" _-FIGHHHHHHHHT!"_

-No.

This isn't going to be a fight.

This is going to be an end.

"DAMASCUS! KILL HIM!"

"SHELLSHOCK! DO IT NOW!"

…

"..."

"You're all looking at me mighty funny right now."

"..."

"...Just a moment ago, you lot were all looking about as guilty as fucking sin."

"..."

"You all know what I'm talking about. We did it to ourselves."

"..."

"...And you know what?"

"..."

"We deserved a whole hell of a lot worse than what we got."

"..."

"If it wasn't for the fucking King-"

"-..."

"-SAY THAT AGAIN, YOU IGNORANT LITTLE FUCK!"

"..."

"You... have... no idea. You haven't got a clue…"

"..."

"...Really? Then tell me. What do you think it was?"

"-..."

"Heh. That blue... You should trade that seedy sweater in for something white."

"...-?"

"...And then you should go take a walk on the King's path, and see just how dark that white becomes."

…

I should have seen it coming.

I was fighting a fucking ambitious Gym Leader at the end of her rope.

 _-I should have known that it was coming._

The Fucking Bastard would have seen it coming.

But I was blind…

Blinded by my hate…

Blinded by the self-loathing…

...Blinded by the fear…

When I looked at Shellshock, I didn't see an opponent for me to overcome.

-I saw where my path led.

Misty had pioneered that path for me.

If nothing else, the Tomboy Mermaid's cruelty had at least shown me…

...Who I didn't want to become.

And I was afraid.

I was afraid that it was already too late for me.

Too late for me to turn away from my chosen path...

But then I looked at Shellshock…

-And my every shadow of a doubt was erased.

I now knew with certainty.

I now knew a conviction.

I now knew beyond my every prior inhibition, that I didn't want my little girl to hate me in the same way that Misty's little boy had come to hate her.

...Shellshock's life had become a disease.

...And I…

...I wanted to cure him.

-But Misty's crutch…

...The very same crutch that Misty had abused, until there was nothing left of him but a forgotten hope and a bitter hate…

...That broken crutch…

...Was still so much more than anything Misty could ever hope to deserve.

…

-Blastoise.

They're some pretty fucking scary animals.

Everybody knows that those turtles are as tough as nails, and Shellshock stood before me as the incontestable proof.

But the one trait that separates the Blastoise from virtually every other species of mon recorded in the known world, _isn't_ their ability to weather through the kind of shit that would kill almost every other breed of mon ten times over.

-It's those fucking shoulder mounted dual hydro cannons.

Blastoise have a six chambered bladder taking up nearly the entire swell of their massive shells.

Each chamber ends in a valve, and each ascending valve is designed to withstand ever escalating amounts of pressure.

These chambered bladders have a separate pair of final valves that end right before either ivory root of those dual hydro cannons.

The Blastoises' massive muscle lined bladders and their robust valves serve as the biological mechanism employed for generating the forces required for the hydro cannons to launch a continuous jet of water under such an extreme amount of pressure…

...That the hydro ballistics fired from these canons can still retain enough pascals to punch right through a sheet of twenty-two gauge plate steel after the projectile has already covered a distance of forty meters.

In the world of mon, the Blastoise species are regarded as the living equivalent to humanity's pre-Brink MBTs.

Their aquatic evolution sacrificed speed for obscene power at range and an extremely resilient constitution.

But if a Blastoise possess any inclination towards keeping those incredible guns stocked with ammo…

-Then that turtle has to be stationed in the water.

Blastoise can't just magic up ammo for their hydro cannons out of thin air.

-They need to be sitting cozy in a supply dump, channeling a constant feed of water through their mouths and into that chambered bladder, just to keep those scary guns of theirs roaring hot.

-So like a fool…

...I had rudely assumed that Shellshock was helpless against Damascus on the land.

...But what I had failed to consider in my desperate attempt at freeing Shellshock from his life in hell...

 _-Was that Misty's Foil could have entered the Gym's ring packing a fully loaded gun._

…

Damascus and Shellshock were positioned opposite the other on the dry portion's halfway mark. There was all of thirty meters between them, and the shoreline was a scant fifteen meters of distance from Shellshock's back.

And there was no way in hell that Misty's _Foil_ was going to cover that piddly shit fifteen meters before my angry old man of snake covered his thirty meters and killed that Blastoise with one mighty blow.

-But Misty wasn't gunning for the shoreline.

Not yet.

-She had to bait her trap first.

Damascus heeded my order with a rumbling advance. My Onix could cover thirty meters in the blink of an eye, thanks to that huge serpentine physiology of his.

And I had just ordered my snake to advance with all due haste into the optimal range of Shellshock's guns.

-Just as Misty had anticipated.

When those hydro cannons went off, my commitment to cold blooded mercy was lost to both the shock and the angry bellowing of my old snake.

Point blank. A full bladder's salvo.

-Damascus didn't have a prayer.

"DAMASCUS!"

"GET TO THE WATER NOW, SHELLSHOCK!"

"-WHAT A TURN! BRUTUS HAS BEEN AVENGED!"

Damascus was writhing on the ground in abject agony, while his central beads oozed with his ammonia blood.

Tough though they may be, an Onix's surface is riddled with microfractures. It's just a harmless side effect of a Mineral mon's rocky carapace alternatively expanding and contracting due to variations in temperature. These cracks are so tiny that you can't even see most of them with the naked eye, even when you're standing next to one of the Onixia bearing mention.

But when that pressurized jet of water hit Damascus's deflecting rounded sides…

...That high pressured water forced its way into my snake's microfractures…

...And suddenly Damascus's tiny fractures weren't quite so tiny any more.

And as any geologist can tell you…

-Water can erode all stones.

Even the shallowest of oceans can bury the tallest of mountains.

"-WHAT'S THIS?!"

-Well…

...I guess there are some mountains that are just too stubborn to sink.

'Cause Damascus was picking himself back up.

-And my snake was struggling against the pain just to bring down that retreating Blastoise.

"MOVE SHELLSHOCK! RUN!"

-You heartless bitch.

As if your _Foil_ could run on those fucked up flippers.

Shellshock had turned his back on the moaning Onix, and fixed his hate filled glare on the shoreline. And then that ragged Blastoise plodded off towards the water…

...One slow staggering step at a time.

All the while, my Damascus forced himself to move another ten meters…

...Before my ancient snake slammed his massive body back down into the sand, bellowing in rage as the pain tortured him for even trying to move.

-You couldn't see it, now that most of those deepened microfractures had sealed themselves…

...But Shellshock's dual hydro cannons had just about split my white snake in half.

"COME ON DAMASCUS! YOU CAN DO IT! YOU NEED TO DO IT!"

 _-Get up, you old man…_

 _Please, don't let me down-_

That desperate plea filled my chest with a cold dread.

Were those the same selfish pleas that had turned Shellshock into a tragedy?

-I hesitated to give my following command.

And every Ranger could see me locking up.

-But I couldn't do it.

I couldn't order Damascus to continue.

-But that spiteful old man…

...He sure as hell didn't need me telling him to do shit.

Shellshock was at the shoreline when Damascus cut loose with the single angriest _RUMBLE_ that Onixkind has ever produced...

-And my snake was back in the game, slithering through the sandy meters on a ramming intercept with the newly wet-toed Shellshock.

"-WHAT IS THIS SNAKE MADE OF?!"

 _-Spite_.

Two thousand years worth of pure, unadulterated; heavily-concentrated and premium-aged spite.

...And it was _almost_ enough…

-To stop that Blastoise from limping into the water.

 _Shellshock, The Foil._

 _..._ Even cruel God wept for you when you obeyed that red headed monster's order.

"DAMASCUS! HOLD!" My pissed off snake entered the sandy shallows of the shore, just as Shellshock fell to his belly in the water, and pivoted both guns dead level with my white snake.

My finger was jammed into my console's 'Substitution' button. And a thirty second timer began counting down on the Battle Screen.

"Damascus, return." My snake was still glaring down the barrels of a Blastoise fortified in the water when the red dematerialization beam extended from Damascus's Heavy Ball, and brought him back into the safety of my kiosk.

My hand raised another Pokeball, and Misty's eyes hardened.

The one that she had been fearing.

The one that could deploy a flare on the dry portion's field, well outside the effective range of Shellshock's guns.

The one who could truck it across the length of the shoreline at a speed well ahead of that turtle's hydrostream; while she sprayed a toxic pollen into the water that was so potent, it could kill every living thing in a lake within minutes of diffusion.

-So why did the Fucking Bastard look so worried?

"-ZANE HAS CALLED A SUBSTITUTION! DAMASCUS HAS BEEN INJURED, AND SHELLSHOCK IS IN A PRIME GUNNING POSITION! BUT CAN ZANE'S SABOTEUR WIN HIM THE MATCH?!"

I looked over at my console.

There it was, the red button at the very top.

The one button that I was dying to push.

The 'Forfeit' button.

" _-VAUBAN! -VAUBAN! -VAUBAN! -VAUBAN!"_ The crowd was cheering her name. I wondered for a moment what my little girl would be thinking of me right now, as she watched this event unfold on a television, all cozy and cared for in the chilly confines of a Pokemart's rear cooler.

-I wondered if my sweet Vauban felt guilty...

"-YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO MAKE YOUR MOVE, RANGER! IF YOU DO NOT SEND OUT A POKEMON BEFORE THE TIMER REACHES ZERO, YOU WILL AUTOMATICALLY FORFEIT THE MATCH!"

" _-ZANE! -ZANE! -ZANE!"_

I gritted my teeth, and glared at the standard G.I. Pokeball clenched in my trembling hand.

"-FIVE SECONDS!"

...Goddamnit...

" _-FOUR!"_

 _..._ I just couldn't do it…

" _-THREE!"_

Misty was looking at me all funny. Why hadn't I committed my Vauban to an easy win?

" _-TWO!"_

"AW, FUCK!"

" _-ONE!"_

"DARWIN! REPORT!"

The timer hit zero, just as my Pokeball released its occupant into the aquatic portion of the Cerulean Gym's ring.

Once again, an eerie silence had overcome the entirety of the Gym.

And then…

...Someone snickered.

-Some people started chortling.

Then someone screamed out an obscenity in the stands…

...And the floodgates of laughter spilled open.

I punched my 'Substitution' button again in the midst all that laughter. I converted both of my remaining substitutions into a full minute timeout, and devoted that purchased time to a little heart to heart with my fish.

Misty was ogling at me from across the field.

-Was this a joke?!

Yep. It was.

-My obese joke of a Magikarp, just paddling around in the aquatic portion of the Gym ring.

Darwin.

I swapped my mic's channel onto a setting that I had sworn before a Blackhat I would never have to use.

"...Give me a breach if you can hear me, Darwin."

- _Splish._

 _-CRASH._ Said Darwin.

People were pressing their wide-eyed smiling faces up against the tank's glass wall, drinking in the biggest joke to ever been released within the Cerulean City Gym.

"Okay. Darwin. I'm gonna be straight with you."

"You can't take that Blastoise."

Darwin stopped swimming in his happy circle, and turned to face the wreck of Shellshock, who was now glaring his mindless hatred at my fish from the frothy shallows of the shoreline.

"But Darwin? I don't know what else to do…"

My fat fish swam right up to the surface, still looking at that Blastoise.

"Now I know, this isn't fair. This isn't fair at all. But I have to ask you for something, Darwin…"

My obese Magikarp was sitting perfectly still in the water.

"...You remember that medal you earned, saving my ass from the Venomoth?"

Misty had found her cool with a mile-long-smile. For whatever reason, Zane Bastard had just delivered her a victory on a silver platter.

"I need you to prove me wrong again, Darwin…"

"...I need you to be the miracle that saves my ass again…"

...And that goofy Magikarp leveled himself out in the water, still facing that brain dead and hating Blastoise…

-Before my brave _Darwin_ began to aggressively flutter his feeble fins in preparation for an attack.

…

"..."

"...You can't train a Magikarp for combat applications. This is an undeniable fact."

"..."

"I'd wasted a year of my life learning that one established truth, as I endeavored to crack the genetic secret of what type of stimulus was required to activate Darwin's latent pseudodragon genes; which in turn, would trigger the evolution cycle of the world's biggest monster."

"..."

"So for any ambitious Trainers out there, still sporting to earn their Gyaradosia the hard way, let the Fucking Bastard lay it out for you one last time."

"..."

"-You. -Cannot. -Train. -A Magikarp. -For combat. -Applications."

"..."

"...Yet in spite of this incontestable truth…"

"..."

"...Well before he even became the _Midgar…_ "

"..."

"...My Darwin…"

"..."

"...Had secured his place forevermore within my heart…."

"..."

" _-As my Hero…"_

…

If I had thought that Gale and Cortez's duel had been tax on my mental faculties, as well as the truest test of my mon's element synergy with their CO…

- _That first round was absolutely nothing compared to what Darwin and I went through in the start of the final stage._

"-SHELLSHOCK FINALLY HAS THAT WILY FISH PINNED- WAIT! DARWIN JUST BREACHED HIS WAY OUT!"

"-He's eight meters off your starboard stern, sucking down brine for another salvo!"

"-YET ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL EVASION FROM DARWIN! HOW LONG CAN THIS FISH CHEAT DEATH?!"

"-Dive three fathoms down, go for a feint, and then breach at the very last second!"

"-I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT THIS MAGIKARP HAS LASTED THIS LONG! WE'RE FOUR MINUTES INTO THE FINAL ROUND, AND SHELLSHOCK HASN'T EVEN SCUFFED A SINGLE ONE OF THOSE RED SCALES YET!"

"-Bank to your portside and dive two fathoms down on my mark- _Shit!_ BANK STARBOARD NOW! DO IT NOW!"

"-GOOD GOD, LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT MAGIKARP!"

-Yeah, that was one _big_ red fish in Misty's ring. Meaning one big ass target for Shellshock's dual hydro cannons.

Darwin was gambling by the skin of his non-existent teeth, for odds even lower than a child's hope in hell.

 _-My fucking Magikarp was proving himself worth his every fucking Sandz._

"-I JUST DON'T KNOW WHO IS GONNA TIRE OUT FIRST!"

-Neither did I.

Nor did Misty.

But whoever tired out first…

-Would lose the match.

 _-League Code 36, Article 42:_

The Final Round.

And the Rules of Attrition.

 _-The final round will award victory to the Trainer who sustains the least amount of casualties throughout the course of the match. Appointed League officials, henceforth referred to as 'Judges' will gauge the parameters of either competitor's Pokemon and their post conflict conditions at the conclusion of the final round…_

 _...Forbearing the event of a stalemate due to the process of the final round timing out, Judges will award victory to the Trainer whose overall roster of Pokemon accrued the least amount of injuries warranting medical attention…_

Darwin could still win. But for that to happen, we need to make it all the way to the end of the timer without losing a scale on my fish.

-Damascus was out. He couldn't hurt that Blastoise in the water, and their last stand off against one another had resulted in Misty's Shellshock inflicting a crippling injury on my snake.

-And Darwin couldn't even hope to leave a mark on that ridiculously tough Blastoise. But we still maintained an advantage in this match.

Misty had one uninjured mon.

I had one badly injured mon and one uninjured mon.

You don't have to be a mathematician to add up that kind of logic.

-We could still win.

But that all depended upon my ability to guide Darwin through this hell of a trial, as well as on Darwin's ability to just keep on being the fucking miracle.

The clock just struck the fifteen minute mark.

We were a fourth of the way there.

-And if Darwin was half as exhausted as I was…

"JUST FUCKING BREACH!"

-Then we were never gonna make it.

I didn't think that it was possible for Shellshock to start getting anymore pissed off than he already was, but Misty's hate filled turtle…

...Had decided to take his entire cruel life out on my Magikarp.

I couldn't afford to pity him anymore. I had only heart for Darwin.

 _-And that heart was hammering hard._

"-SHELLSHOCK IS GIVING IT EVERYTHING HE'S GOT, BUT THIS CRAZY MAGIKARP JUST REFUSES TO GO DOWN!"

How do you like my fish, Misty?

You hear that sound coming from the bleachers?

Is that Shellshock's name they're screaming?

" _-DARWIN! -DARWIN! -DARWIN!"_

-Nope.

"Cute Magikarp, Ranger, but Shellshock has fought even bigger fish before-"

"-I couldn't tell." I spat that line right back at Misty, and watched her recoil from the venom in my voice.

You can go to hell, Mermaid.

-If you actually felt just one ounce of his pain, you would never have put him in this ring.

"DARWIN! GO LONG!" I shouted to my Magikarp, and Darwin broke out a shuttle burst of speed, flying well out the range of Shellshocks guns.

But that turtle was repositioning for a follow through, and my Darwin jettisoned himself in a loop in order to avoid the subaquatic discharges from Shellshock's dual cannons.

Shellshock's range was cut in half below the surface, and all that combat training I'd gone through with Darwin was finally paying off. Not the combat part, obviously; but the endurance that Darwin had built up in all of my exhaustive conditioning was beginning to reveal its measure.

Until this moment, I had no idea that my chunky fish was that nimble. But that ignorance was all on me; simply because the bitter truth was...

-I'd never given Darwin a chance to shine before.

And that goofy fat fucking fish…

...Was positively itching for his chance to shine.

Oh, Darwin…

 _-You are so much more than I deserve._

"Shellshock. Turn down the taps. On pursuit." Misty ordered of her Foil, and again, Shellshock mysteriously followed his loathsome Trainer's command.

"Darwin, go deep." I countered my command to Misty's, just as Shellshock stowed his cannons in favor of increased hydrodynamics for the pursuit.

It didn't take very long for Misty Willows to figure out that her Shellshock just couldn't keep up with my Darwin in a race.

My fish was swimming circles around her Blastoise.

-Literally.

The crowd was laughing again, but they weren't laughing at my miraculous joke of a fish. They were laughing at Shellshock, as my Darwin twisted that turtle every which way but straight. That Magikarp was dashing about in loops dangerously close to Shellshock's razored beak, and there was absolutely nothing that Shellshock could do stop to him.

That laughter hurt. That laughter cut deep.

I could see the grieving child poking past the Tomboy Mermaid's mask. Those eyes were wet and red, and those teeth were clenched and shaking.

-It's too late for that, Misty.

You had your chance.

 _-And you burned him up._

I wasn't laughing with the crowd. I was sending my own hurtful message directly into eyes of that grieving child.

-This was anything but funny.

This was all just sickening.

And I let Misty know that with my cold glare alone.

"SHELLSHOCK! START CORRALLING THAT FISH!" Misty ordered, and her turtle once again paid heed to the demoness who had scourged his entire existence.

 _Did some part of that tragedy still love her?_

 _-Or was that just a fragment of hope, clinging on to the memories of better days?_

Shellshock opened his cannons up again, and started firing at my fish. Only now, Shellshock wasn't aiming for Darwin. He was using his cannons to cut off Darwin's escapes.

I realized what Misty was planning just a second too late.

Shellshock was herding Darwin into the shallows, trying to get my erratically leaping fish to beach himself on the sand.

"Darwin, you've got to get out of there!" My blood went cold when I saw the diminishing space my Magikarp had for outmaneuvering those guns.

Darwin shimmied to the left-

-And a cannon blast cut him off.

Darwin shimmied to the right-

-And a rock stopped him dead.

"GET HIM, SHELLSHOCK!"

-No.

I have faith in you, Darwin.

"DARWIN! YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO SWIM RIGHT AT HIM!"

Desperation, faith; what's the difference?

I need you to do something, and I know that you can do it.

-And Darwin did it.

Pivoting right on his tail fin, Darwin broke into an aquatic charge on an intercepting route with the two guns aimed straight at him.

"Breach on my mark!"

I knew what to look for.

Newton's Third Law of Motion.

-The pressure generated by those cannons was so intense, that the waterlogged Blastoise firing them off was pushed backwards by the opposing force.

In order to compensate for the muzzle drift of his canons, Shellshock had to use what was left of his limbs and vigorously tread the water. I waited for the Blastoise's telltale thrashing, before giving Darwin the mark.

Shellshock started warming up-

"READY!"

Those fucked up stumps were paddling now-

"-MARK!"

And my Darwin breached just in time to avoid the salvo.

-And that was when I noticed that something was wrong.

Shellshock was only shooting one cannon.

That was supposed to be biologically impossible. His chambered bladder wasn't designed to withhold the pressure of only one cannon going off at a time. Both barrels needed to dump that water as quickly as they could in order to prevent a cataclysmic tissue failure. The Blastoise species possessed a biological safeguard in order to prevent their cannons from being fired separately. That safeguard? Both of those final sets of valves operated off the same neural transmitter.

There was no way in hell that Shellshock could open one valve and close the other at the same time.

It just wasn't possible-

Shellshock's second barrel was rapidly leading Darwin's descent. The same principle of physics that I'd used to gauge the shot was also being utilized by that turtle to rapidly position the second gun.

Using the muzzle drift of his first shot to enhance the speed of his pivot, Shellshock lined up the second gun's barrel on my airborne Darwin...

-And when that cannon fired…

...Shellshock's aim proved true.

"-A DIRECT HIT ON THE FLANK! THAT FISH IS TOAST!"

Darwin was thrown right against the shore with that blast. He had never even reentered the water after that last breach. And nimble though my fish was…

...Those fins could only flail uselessly in atmosphere.

My hammering heart entered my throat.

There he was. My fallen miracle.

On his side.

Perfectly still.

Blood staining the water in which he drifted.

His red scales surfacing around him.

"DARWIN!"

"-AND THAT WAS A ONE HIT KNOCK OUT SHOT FROM SHELLSHOCK! WHAT AN UNBELIEVABLE TURN AROUND!"

I just about entered the field with the medical squad.

-I almost forfeited the match.

But a stern cold voice in my ear stopped me dead.

"Stay on position, Zane. One more boot outside that gate will cost you the match."

-Captain Lewis, radioing me from the stands.

What was she talking about?

I had nothing left to fight with-

"You don't have much time. Eleven minutes remaining, and the clock is still counting down. Prep Damascus for a scrapping." Captain Lewis told me the last thing I wanted to hear.

"To hell with that! Shellshock is still in the water-!"

"That was an order, soldier. Now carry out your duty." Captain Lewis killed the feed, and I was left to watch in shock as Darwin was ferried out by the League's medics.

-How bad was he?

They didn't even tell me.

I looked down at my final Pokeball.

Silver and white. A ring of blue beads encircling the bulky crown.

My old snake.

 _Damascus._

"Shall we finish this, Zane?" Misty's coy voice sounded across the Gym.

I looked up at Misty. The timer had started again. I had thirty seconds to make my play.

I looked back at that red button. The button labeled 'Forfeit.'

I looked back at that redheaded monster, smiling her finest for the adoration of her fans.

And then I looked over to Shellshock, and I met those loathe-locked eyes.

Was it worth it? Was all that pain really worth it?

Could anyone justify that?

Then I looked to the Heavy Ball in my palm...

-And my mind was made up on the spot.

"Damascus. Report." My injured snake entered the field, already shaking against the pain from his prior injury.

Misty was smirking at an easy mark, an Onix too wounded to even evade her Blastoise's guns.

"Damascus." I called out to my snake, and bit my lip. I had put up with enough of this already...

-If they didn't want me in their Operation…

...Then they didn't have to keep me there.

"Your call. Forfeit or fight." I whispered to my snake over the mic.

Damascus started to rattle with a low rumble.

I didn't know what to make of that.

That crazy old snake could've said, ' _Poodoo pie,_ ' for all I know.

"You're gonna have to give me more to work with than that, Damascus."

- _RUMBLE._

And that Onix's crashing tail gave me the answer I'd been looking for.

"-Okay then…"

-I had my snake's support.

"...We fight."

I put my calm eyes on Misty, and saw her waver when Damascus mirrored my gaze to her.

-Do you miss that, Misty? Sharing something with your family?

"-AND THE MIGHTY DAMASCUS RETURNS FOR THE FINAL EVENT! WHAT IS ZANE AND HIS SNAKE PLANNING TO DO NOW?!"

-We don't know. But we're gonna do it anyways.

"Well then, Zane… I'll make it quick." Misty spoke softly from across the field.

-Go ahead and try, Misty. You go right ahead and try.

My crippled old man, against your ruined little boy…

-Heh.

Even if I lose…

-I'm still gonna hold on to more than you will.

"-THREE SECONDS TO GO!"

Yep.

" _-THREE!"_

-Just get them over with already.

" _-TWO!"_

"...I'm sorry, Shellshock…" I found myself murmuring.

" _-ONE!"_

"...I tried…"

" _-FIGHT!"_

And no sooner had those words been spoken, then Shellshock's cannons fired their opening salvo at my snake…

...And my old man…

...Just stood there and took it.

"-WHAT-?!"

"-WHAT JUST HAPPENED DOWN THERE?!"

"...Damascus?"

My old man just shook off the water, and turned back to me.

-He was just as confused as I was.

"...Shellshock?" That lost little redheaded girl was back, looking down at her Blastoise with concern.

"-SHELLSHOCK'S CANNONS HAD NO EFFECT?!"

-Well color the Gym surprised.

I wasn't the only one expecting Damascus to get cooked by that.

"...Oh no…" Misty covered her worried mouth.

-That wasn't supposed to happen?

" _-Oh no…"_ Misty was looking at her Blastoise with a fresh level of guilt.

-And suddenly it all clicked.

"...Fancy trick. Firing off one cannon like that. Neither Darwin nor I saw it coming. I take it that Shellshock's brain injury had something to do with him being able to pull it off?" I asked over the PA, my voice growing cold when I glared across the ring at Misty.

Misty fucking swallowed. I could see her throat bobbing from where I stood.

"...Looks like your Blastoise has just fired off his last round. And judging from the state he's already in? That was probably the last round for the rest of his life. I hope that last shot was worth a _Magikarp_..." I growled.

Misty's whole body started trembling.

"Willows?"

I wasn't gonna get a verbal acknowledgement from her.

"-I just wanted to tell you something."

Those horrified eyes met mine.

"...You make me sick."

"SHELLSHOCK!"

"DAMASCUS!"

"-GO DEEP!"

"-GET THAT TURTLE!"

I'm gonna find a way Misty…

I'm gonna find a way to open your blind eyes before the end.

…

Misty's Foil hoofed it into deeper water, just as Damascus slammed his head into the shallows that Shellshock had previously occupied. I was in a spitting fury. That turtle was out of Damascus's striking range, and though Shellshock couldn't hurt my snake anymore...

-Neither could Damascus harm him in deep water, and other than the unhealed war wounds that he'd entered the field with…

Shellshock didn't have a mark on him. My own time stalling antics were coming back to haunt me. And we'd already burned up half the clock for Misty.

-Whatever the hell we were going to do, we needed to do it fast.

"Hey Gramps? My trick bag is cleaned out. You got anything to play with?"

- _RUMBLE._

"That's a no… Shit…" For the first time since Shellshock had entered the field, I could afford the luxury of slow contemplative thinking. I tried to look at the problem from all sides, but no matter what angle I approached it from...

-It all boiled down to us being absolutely helpless.

"The turtle can't hit us, and we can't hit the turtle… Why can't we hit the turtle?"

-Because the turtle is in the water.

"So we need to get the turtle out of the water, but I didn't bring my fishing tackle… So we can't get the turtle out of the water, but we could try-"

-Bingo.

"...Damascus? I just had me a crazy idea. You up for doing some damage?" I asked my old snake.

- _RUMBLE._

That's Onix for, ' _Hell yes.'_

"Damascus. Start digging."

And my clever old snake…

...Instantly caught on to my line of thinking.

Damascus lunged into the Gym's dry sand, and started digging _deep._

The whole Gym shook as Damascus tore through the earth below it.

"Find me a cave in that Cerulean limestone, Damascus. Find me a big cave."

-My plan?

If we couldn't take the turtle away from the water…

...Then we'd just have to take the water away from the turtle.

-But in hindsight?

That clever idea ranks among my list of top five 'Stupidest Ideas that I've Ever Acted On.'

I had my eyes glued to the timer, while Damascus's tremors grew more and more faint.

He'd been digging for almost two solid minutes now, and there was still no telltale _RUMBLE_ sounding from the deep hole that Damascus had left behind.

The commentator was silent.

Other than the obvious, he'd didn't have too terribly much to commentate on.

But my plan was anything but obvious.

-It really was just flat out stupid.

After about three minutes had passed, the audience started to murmur amongst themselves.

-But I still didn't hear my snake rumbling from afar.

I finally looked away from the countdown when the clock turned over to the last five minutes.

Misty was watching me with a nervous look in her eye. She knew that I was up to something, and I was content to just stand by and smirk.

Four minutes to go, and I was starting to feel nervous. Damascus had been digging for a long time. Maybe he couldn't-

- _RUMBLE._

-Scratch that. The old man had finally found exactly what I was looking for.

"Alright, Damascus. Here's the plan. I want you to dig a shaft at a downwards angle, connecting to the hole you just dug into that cavern. Then I want you to connect the other end of that shaft-"

 _-RUMBLE._

"Okay, smart ass. If you know what to do, then fucking do it already."

-I was smiling like my namesake when the tremors started shaking the Gym again.

I looked over to where Shellshock had decided to hole up. All the way over against the opposite wall, in the deepest water that the Gym offered. Right below Misty's feet.

There was blood oozing from both muzzles of Shellshock's dual hydro cannons, summing up my theory quite gruesomely.

This was Shellshock's last fight. Those cannons would never shoot lethal rounds again.

-Maybe now that she had used up his last asset, Misty could finally find the heart to cherish her little boy for something more than his combat prowess. Maybe now, Shellshock could finally have his Misty back…

...Or maybe Misty would just boil him down and turn him into stew.

-I didn't even care anymore. I was so past caring about Misty Willows.

"Damascus we've got a minute and half left. You better be-"

 _-Thunk._

Oh boy.

 _-Thunk!_

People started racing for the tank's glass wall. Something weird was happening to the floor of the ring's aquatic tank.

-Why was that mud spraying into the water?

...Because my snake was adding a new renovation to the Cerulean City Gym's wet portion...

-A drain.

 _-THUNK!_

"Damascus, you better have dug yourself an exit tunnel…"

 _...RUMBLE?_

"...Oh hell no, you stupid motherfucking senile old-!"

 _THUNK._

-Uh oh.

...Why had the elevation of the Gym floor suddenly dropped?

Everybody.

In the Gym.

Went.

 _Dead_.

Silent.

-I could hear something cracking from beneath the ground…

And then…

-The whole Gym bounced.

...And a buckling fissure that stretched from wall to far flung wall…

-Split the entire compound in _half._

-What had I just done?

"DAMASCUS-!"

"SHELLSHOCK-!"

"-GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE NOW!" Misty and I were screaming the same damn thing to our two mon simultaneously.

Everybody in the stands started screaming.

The floor jounced again-

-And the entire wet portion of the Gym began draining into a newly rent fault, which stretched out and merged with the bulging crack that spanned from the Gym's northern wall to its southern wall.

Water and limestone.

-They don't mix.

...Actually, they do. Which was the problem currently besieging the Cerulean City Gym.

All that loose limestone beneath the Cerulean City Gym was washing away in the onset of a subterranean flash flood.

- _What had we done?_

 _...Well..._

-Damascus and I had just turned the entire Gym compound into ground zero for a soon to be gaping sinkhole.

Thank God, half of those people in the stands were trained Rangers.

-Who, as it happens, also remembered to bring their G.I. mon with them.

The Greenbacks were hustling under the command of Captain Lewis to aid in the evacuation of the Cerulean City Gym. The camera crews were still struggling to unplug and pack their shit up, when a massive falling chunk of the ceiling…

...Convinced them that all their equipment could be replaced.

-Then the tremors brought about by the folding earth knocked Misty clean out of her kiosk. A Ranger's Pidgeotto snagged her falling ass right out of the air before the Cerulean City Gym Leader could splatter her brains against the now surprisingly dry aquatic tank floor.

And Shellshock?

-That ruin of a Blastoise had hauled his ass up unto the dry portion of the Gym well before the wet portion had even finished draining.

That hateful look of his was finally gone.

That poor turtle was scared out of his half-dead mind.

And Damascus?

...Where the hell was my snake?

"DAMASCUS! REPORT IN!" I shouted into my mic.

There wasn't an Onix's rumble to answer me over all the sounds of the crumbling Gym.

"DAMASCUS! FALL IN!"

Shellshock was right at my kiosk gate, and trying his damnedest to scramble up the enclosed ring wall.

"DAMASCUS! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!?" I was getting wicked worried for the fate of my snake, when the ground split open beneath my feet, and I just about fell into a darkness deep enough to rival the Distortion itself.

Somebody's arms grabbed a hold of me before I could finish toppling into the abyss, and then I was being dragged away from the devastation by the Blackhat's most vicious bitch herself, Captain Mary Lewis.

"DAMASCUS!"

My old snake-

-Where the hell was he?!

"DAMASCUS!" I was screaming through tears and clenched teeth.

"LEAVE HIM, ZANE!" That was the urgent voice of Captain Lewis fighting against me as I struggled to remain in place.

...My old man…

"DAMASCUS!"

"DON'T MAKE ME KNOCK YOU OUT, RANGER!" Captain Lewis finally found a firm purchase on my uniform, and hauled me up over her shoulder.

...I was bigger than she was. How the hell did she do that?

"GRAMPS!"

 _Never leave a man behind…_

 _...Never abandon your family…_

"DAMASCUS!"

 _-RUMBLE!_

I think that's Onix for, ' _SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!'_

We started feeling a new set of tremors following on the tail of that rumble. I could just barely see the Cerulean ring's floor from my position in the Kiosk, but I could still see the fumbling stumps of Shellshock's forelegs desperately trying to find leverage on the enclosure's elevated rim.

...And then all of the sudden…

...That fucked up turtle…

...Was flying high into the sky, riding on a pillar of loose dirt.

...And following this earthen pillar…

-Was a rather unique looking Onix still gunning for the fight that we had both agreed upon.

After having been shafted up into the Gym ceiling, Shellshock slammed hard on his belly not even a meter behind Captain Lewis and I…

-And then a massive shadow passed over the three of us…

Before my Damascus fell on that stunned Blastoise maw first.

-Then strangely enough...

A sudden jarring tremor from the settling earth tilted one of the abandoned national news' syndicate cameras at just the right angle…

And a live broadcast captured the image of an Onix pinning a Blastoise to the Cerulean City Gym's crumbling floor…

...Right before the still functioning Battle Screen fell from its roost in the concaving ceiling…

...And with a loud spray of glass and sparks, the previously falling Battle Screen closed the curtain on the live stream of Zane Bastard's Cerulean City Gym challenge…

...With just fourteen seconds on the clock to go.

…

I had earned the Boulder Badge by cheating.

\- And I had honestly believed that I would never be able to beat that level of controversy in my League career.

But just one Gym challenge later?

-I had earned my Cascade Badge by tearing the Cerulean City Gym into the earth itself.

Or at least, that's how Cerulean remembers me. Misty just about broke my new Badge when she wordlessly pressed it into my palm.

...But that redhead's expression said it all…

-Here's your fucking Badge. Now get the hell out.

And as for Misty's Cerulean based fan club? I received their message loud and clear.

-You've got until morning to get yourself gone...

Yeah…

I really did like old Cerulean…

...But then I had to go and fuck it all up.

Astoundingly, the same travesty that condemned the Cerulean City Gym as unfit for habitation; also failed to accrue a single casualty from either man or mon.

You can thank the Cerulean Rangers for that.

-Who were currently just too busy to care, as they celebrated my victory by getting roaring drunk and hunting for increasingly larger objects to hurl down Cerulean's newest attraction.

-The Cerulean Crater.

A massive gaping hole in Cerulean City's heart, commemorating the location of the Historical Cerulean City Gym.

Funnily enough, I was covered by the both League's insurance and their codes regarding Damages Accrued to League Property During League Certified-

-You know what?

Fuck the League.

I had bigger problems to deal with right now.

-Such as the press.

Who, unlike the disgruntled Cerulean denizens, really wanted the Fucking Bastard to stick around.

I was glad that I still had those ugly fucking Aviator shades that Willows had lent me, 'cause otherwise I might have developed epilepsy when the paparazzi assaulted me on the outskirts of the Cerulean Crater.

-I'm not even gonna repeat what those bloodsucking bastards asked me.

But halfway into mine and Captain Lewis's mosh through the endless swarm of reporters, my Tact. Pad started buzzing with an incoming call from Fuck-Nuts.

"ZANE! YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD! OH MY GOD, THE PHONE JUST WON'T STOP RINGING-!" Apparently, Chris Lebreau really likes answering phones.

-The freak.

"HOW DID YOU DO THAT?! DON'T TELL ME THAT IT WAS PLANNED?!" Chris's euphoric insinuation drew the entire crowd of reporters even closer to my socially claustrophobic person.

"...No, Chris… It wasn't planned…"

-I felt like I was gonna throw up.

"Well, whatever! It was fucking brilliant! This is exactly what we needed! I have _both Indigo's_ channel four _and_ channel seven knocking down my front door for a live interview with the Fucking Bastard! Fucking _Indigo_ wants to interview _you!"_

"...That's great, Chris… That's just fucking great…"

-No it fucking isn't.

"You did it Zane! You fucking did it! Just wait until the press does a background check on your League credentials! When that whole Pewter City Gym catastrophe crops up on their radar-"

-Oh my God.

I couldn't even breath for all of the mics that were suddenly being shoved into my face when Chris mention the Pewter City Gym incident.

-I was seriously going to blow grits over every fuzzy mic-

"-Enough of this bullshit. Solomon, get this filth out of my way." Captain Lewis sounded every bit as pissed off as her Gyarados did, when she released him from his Heavy Ball, and ordered Solomon to drive the swarm of reporters screaming into the road.

"Do you remember how to fly a Class Six, Bastard?" Captain Lewis asked me after the paparazzi had been subdued by a Blackhat Gyarados.

I could barely nod my green-tinged head.

"-No you don't. You were flying with a saddle and harness last time. I'm advancing your curriculum. We're barebacking this Gyarados the hell outta here."

Then Captain Lewis flung my trembling ass over the rostrum of her Wyrm…

And the two of us left Cerulean City for a scenic cruise over Wrecker Cape.

-And I still have the bruises on my thighs from all the uncomfortable bucking that Solomon put me through on our barebacked flight.

…

"Solomon, fly low. Take us to Cerulean's southern gate discreetly." Captain Lewis ordered. Solomon let loose a deep rumble, before the hiss of helium could be heard as the buoyant gases vacated his flight bladder through his mouth. The massive fins closed against the armored sides of the beast, and Solomon began a steady descent south.

We entered Cerulean City via the south gate, into a district of the fair city that had been crumbling since the second burning. This wasn't the beautiful and popular northern precinct, or the meandering downtown section.

Southern Cerulean was a ghetto, and not even the paparazzi would risk a trip into the depths of crime and destitution that plagued the southern half of the city. That said, even Black Market enforcers knew better than to pick a fight with a Blackhat. The scum of the streets scurried to make themselves scarce in light of Captain Lewis's presence.

It's just common knowledge. Rangers don't put up with any form of intimidation tactics. Posturing gangster antics to a Greenback is the same damn thing as requesting that Ranger to work your dumb ass over. And the Blackhats aren't afraid of letting their terrifying G.I. mon loose to make a scene out of the least little dispute. As Captain Lewis's recent outburst regarding the press stood testament to.

So unlike the paparazzi, we were feeling pretty safe in that dump of a precinct.

That said, I was still numb to it all.

The fact that I had just destroyed an entire League Gym compound, endangered hundreds of lives, pissed off the general population of Cerulean, and alienated yet another Gym Leader…

...Yeah, I felt like absolute shit.

I really wanted to visit Cerulean sometime in the future, but the lynch mobs were gonna deter me from that. I just followed Captain Lewis's silent footsteps through the ghetto in complete shock, and when she finally came to a stop before a street vendor, I just about planted my nose in the back of her graying dome.

"Congratulations, Zane." Captain Lewis turned to me with an ice-cream cone after having completed her transaction with the street vendor.

I could only stare at her offering in disbelief.

"...Seriously?" I asked, accepting the ice-cream cone from my CO with an incredulous expression on my face. Captain Lewis stiffened ever so slightly.

"A simple 'thank you,' should suffice, Ranger."

"Fair enough. Thanks for the ice-cream. Now where's the booze?" I actually managed to grin at my scandalized CO.

"I don't drink, and according to Alexandria's latest progress report, you need to lay off the sauce. You've had one too many close calls while under the influence. It's time to sober up, Zane." Captain Lewis informed me, starting on her own cone.

"Fuck that." I grunted, digging Colonel Howes's fifty-year-old gift out of my kit. But those cold eyes of Captain Lewis's froze me solid.

"-Alexandria and I could make your prohibition a standing order, Ranger." Captain Lewis warned me in an icy tone before I could even pull the cork out.

I was grimacing like a sore bitch when I took my first bite of ice-cream.

"...It's delicious." I reluctantly grumbled to Captain Lewis. And I couldn't believe what happened next.

Captain Mary Lewis of Blackhat Team Seven, who was recognized as both the most severely tempered broad and the coldest hearted bitch in all of the Ranger Corps…

...Was actually smiling at me.

"Chris Lebreau was right, Zane. You made the spectacle that we needed you to make in order to get this Operation into the public's radar. You did well, kid."

-That was not what I had been expecting.

"Yeah. Great. You know, I actually liked Cerulean. I actually liked it a lot…" I was whingeing on the spot.

"You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. And you broke one very famous and expensive egg, Zane. The Cerulean Gym is now the primary ingredient in your League omelet. Now you just have to garnish it." Captain Lewis was still smiling, though there was an uncharacteristic mischief playing in those normally cold eyes.

"Right. I just hope that my dead corpse doesn't serve as the seasoning to this omelet." I moaned, stepping off on my right foot. Captain Lewis gave me the reins on our walk through the ghetto. After finishing the ice-cream, we were both completely silent. Right up until-

"-Zane?"

"Yes sir?" I halted my pace, and about faced to my Superior.

"What is your next move?" Captain Lewis was back to her normal self. I couldn't repress my sigh. After all the shit that I'd gone through in Cerulean, I had actually been hoping for a little break while my ravaged team recovered. But the mission was behind schedule. I had postponed both of my first two Gym challenges due to unforeseen circumstances.

Captain Lewis was reminding me that there was a deadline to Operation: Wounded Hearts.

-The Indigo League's 1075th Seasonal Finals. Just eight months away.

"I dunno yet. There's only two more Gyms that will accept Intermediate-Two challenges, and frankly, my squad isn't ready for a Major-ranked Gym battle. I need to compare my roster against Ericka Valhallen's and Lt. Jackie Surge's Intermediate-Two crews, just to get an idea-"

-And that sudden familiar sensation cut me off dead with the dread.

Captain Lewis reacted to it like a bolt of lightning.

"KARST! REPORT!"

Captain Lewis released her Interloper, and one pissed off Blackhat Absol appeared in the center of Cerulean's ghetto streets, before making a beeline straight for a shadowed alleyway. That Absol already knew what it was up against. Interlopers do not like Ghosts. Not one bit. Karst's horn was lowered for the kill and her snarl was rendered in a spitting fury.

Captain Lewis's Absol never stood a chance. Something stopped Karst dead in her tracks with a metallic crash, before her fluffy white ass was hurled right back at Captain Lewis's feet by something that we couldn't even see.

At least, we couldn't see him until he was standing less than a meter before us, his massive sword's jagged tip positioned above Karst's ribs at a perfectly vertical angle. That terrifying shrouded hulk assumed a regal stance, and prepared his two-Ranger audience for an Absol's bloody execution with an ascending pommel.

"That's enough, Pariah."

The Aegislash checked his plunge; sparing the unconscious Karst, and instantly disappeared from our line of sight. A repetitive and distinct sound reverberated from the blackened alley, and his freaky highness stepped out into the failing sunlight; lackadaisically clapping his hands together while that giant fucking sword, shield, and shroud reappeared right behind his left shoulder.

"Bravo. Bravo…" TH was smiling when he slowed his applause. Those shade-hidden eyes were fixed dead center on me.

"Well done, Mister Bastard. Well done indeed. I must confess that I laughed myself hoarse when news of your Cerulean victory reached my ears…" The lazy clapping came to its final cadence, and the Eidolon King slowly lowered his lethargic palms to his sides.

"What do you want, Halcyon?" Captain Lewis was in the danger mode. I knew Captain Lewis's stern voice. I had heard whispers of her friendly voice. But I hadn't heard her business tone since the Snorlax incident in Viridian.

I'm amazed that TH only raised an eyebrow in response to that lethal voice. I would have been booking it for the closest exit if Captain Lewis's deadly tone had been directed at me.

"Merely to congratulate our aspiring Blackhat on his latest triumph, of course." TH was ever so pleasant when he addressed Captain Lewis. Captain Lewis shifted suddenly, cooly moving into position between the shocked me and the smirking him, her hand calmly reaching for the Pokeballs on her belt.

"Zane. Take Solomon and run. Run as fast as you possibly-"

"-Exodus." TH waved his arm in one of his contemptuous gestures. And what answered that listless motion of TH's was his own fucking shadow, defying the angle of light in a blackened wave as it stretched out from him to us, invading Captain Lewis's shadow and my own.

The instant that darkened bridge connected us with TH, the blood froze solid in my veins. That unnatural cold heralded a specific Ghost's presence. I could see him grinning in the merged shadows. I played witness to that bleeding mouth of his splitting open like a fetid scab. I could hear him chuckling from the Distortion in a chorus of wicked voices, encompassing every unhallowed and eldritch range in its every pitch; vexing our ears with the tortured moans of both the conceivable and the unimaginable. I could feel that Ghost crawling under my icy skin…

 _-Exodus_ , TH's fucked up Gengar.

I couldn't voluntarily move a muscle in my frame, and neither could Captain Lewis. We were servants to the legendary _White Shadow_ of House Halcyon. We were nothing more than dogs chained to the kennel master of the Eidolon King.

If TH had wanted to kill us at that point, then his Exodus could have simply strangled us to death with our own fucking hands.

Nothing could deny _Exodus, the White Shadow_ in his immutable form. Nothing could resist this calibre of spiritual possession.

"If you are quite finished with your unfounded plotting, I would feel more than obliged to release you from this rather unnecessary fetter. I came here to speak with you, not to murder you in cold blood." TH was fucking loving this. You could tell that just by looking at his evil grin. He had rendered a Blackhat Captain and her petty Ranger accomplice absolutely helpless without so much as breaking a sweat.

"Exodus, I believe that my verdict has been heeded. You may release them." TH ordered of his lidless-eyed Gengar.

...There was something almost reluctant about that unearthly cackle as TH's grinning shadow hid within the Eidolon King's natural silhouette.

I just about fell on my numb ass when TH returned my self-dictation back to me.

"So what did you come here to say, Halcyon?" Captain Lewis growled. I had to give my Captain props. She barely shuddered after having her will violated by the Eidolon King.

"Oh, there's so much for me to say, Captain… And so little of it pertains to you." TH didn't even bother to look at Captain Lewis when he addressed her. Concealed or not, I could feel those creepy eyes of his staring straight at me.

"Then let me rephrase the question: What do you want with Zane?" Captain Lewis hissed. That jarred me out of my stupor. TH finally broke eye contact with me to shake his head and chuckle.

"Where to begin? Maybe with ACE's security details hounding my every movement- Oh forgive me, ACE's _attempts_ at hounding my every movement-"

"-So what's the tally up to now? Eight dead Agents?" Captain Lewis cut TH off mid sentence. TH just smiled at her.

"Your casualty reports are dated, Captain. Surveillance Team four's failure raised ACE's weekly fatalities up to eleven Agents this afternoon…" TH _politely_ corrected Captain Lewis.

I couldn't have found my breath even if I was suffocating. This was fucking horrifying. TH was ever so casual when referencing the human beings that he had recently murdered. It wasn't right. TH should've felt something for those lost souls, even if they were from ACE…

 _...He should've felt something other than amused._

"They're like cockroaches, really. No matter how many you crush under your heel, there's always a fresh swarm of detritus to replace the countless smitten." TH fixed his evil gaze on me, giving me that knowing smirk; as if he could read the cold horror in my thoughts.

"And what does Zane have to do with you slaughtering ACE surveillance personnel?" Captain Lewis tried to drag TH's attentions back to her, but it was to no avail.

TH was still smiling at me, like I was a tasty piece of meat with a cute little joke written on it.

"It seems that ACE simply cannot take the hint, and leave me to mine own devices. So instead of wasting my and mine revenants' time taking out any more of the rubbish; Oh, and wasting anymore of ACE's dwindling supply of Field Operatives, I thought that it would be for the best if I proposed a compromise." TH finally deigned it appropriate to meet Captain Lewis's cold eyes.

"I will allow ACE to closely monitor my activities within Kanto, without them needing to fear for any further casualties… Under one circumstance." TH's gaze shifted over to me again.

"The ACE Operative responsible for monitoring my activities will be one of mine own choosing." TH smiled at us both, indicating his choice of ACE Operative with an inclined head directed my way.

-Now I was ready to puke.

 _-And TH was only getting started._

"Zane is a Ranger, not an ACE Agent." Captain Lewis grunted. TH started chuckling again.

"Really? I have an official dossier with his identification specifying an ACE Service Record… Every initiative of which has been certified by the ACE Director's own handwritten decree." TH mocked.

My stomach bottomed out against the ground, and started seeping into the cracked tarmac.

I was a registered ACE Operative?

 _-That was news to me._

"-I would recommend _against_ acting on that little contingency, Captain Lewis. Listen to your conscience in this regard. I won't allow you to fulfill that order." TH was quick to add. I looked up at Captain Lewis with a new level of fear. I could see her fighting some kind of internal battle right behind those distant eyes.

"...Cap? What's going on?" I almost backed away from Captain Lewis when I asked her that. Something wasn't right with Captain Lewis, and I could see that it was tearing her apart. But Captain Lewis couldn't answer me. She was somewhere else, somewhere far away from me or my voice.

"I'm terribly sorry, Zane. Allow me to explain. Captain Lewis is currently struggling with ACE's directive concerning liabilities to Operation: Wounded Hearts-"

"-Shut the hell up!" Captain Lewis snapped out of it, and rounded on TH like a Ursaring on the fritz.

"...Though it seems that my concerns were misplaced. Our dear Captain simply cannot bring herself to terminate her long lost sibling's replacement, even if ACE gave her a direct order to do so…" TH smiled warmly at the two of us.

Captain Lewis was weeping.

And I felt the vomit bubbling in my throat.

 _-ACE had given Captain Lewis an order to kill me if I ever found out about my ACE credentials?_

"Go to hell, Halcyon… Just go to fucking hell already…" Captain Lewis spat, wrestling the agony back under control. But TH wasn't done toying with her yet.

"Oh, that's coming Captain Lewis. That's coming quite soon. When my Ghosts finally deliver me into the Distortion, I'll be sure to give your brother my regards… And explain to him how his death at the hands of his sister was all just an unfortunate tragedy brought about by the Military's sordid miscommunications…" TH was living it up. I was choking right next to the crumbling Blackhat who had standing orders to kill me.

 _This thing wasn't a fucking human being…_

 _TH was a Goddamn monster…_

"I- I can't allow it, Halcyon. You are not taking Zane out from under my command." Captain Lewis summoned up every remaining ounce of her resolve and presented to the Eidolon King in a cool challenge.

-And all TH did was laugh his fucking head off at her challenge.

"My dear Mary Lewis! I am so sorry to have placed you in such an embarrassing set of circumstances! But I am afraid that I must remind you…" TH's chuckles winded down into that demeaning smirk.

"...You simply do not have the authority or the means required to deny me my choice in an ACE sponsored escort. So now I must turn to you, Zane…" TH ever so slowly pivoted his head over to me, while the giant fucking Ghost at his shoulder adjusted the angle of its blade.

"-Where do you intend to pose your next League challenge?"

I couldn't answer TH.

I couldn't even breath.

-How was that even relevant?

"What are you playing at, Halcyon?" Captain Lewis growled. But TH was finished with her. He didn't even pay Captain Lewis's murderous glare any heed.

"It seems as though your options are limited to either Vermilion or Celedon next, unless you wish to pose a Major ranked challenge against the Kantonese Gymnase Meister hierarchy… Which I would advise against." TH's smile was gone. He was all business now. My overwhelmed brain struggled with this transition, even while Captain Lewis struggled for a footing in this conversation.

"Just what are you trying to do, Halcyon?!"

"...Surely you're not considering Celedon next, are you Zane? You don't want to return to Celedon. You have family there. Or at least, what's left of your family…" A smile flickered on TH's face for the briefest moment, while his horrid connotations sank into my already broken mind.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU FUCKING FREAK!" Captain Lewis was losing it all over again.

"-What do you mean, what's left of my family!?" I lost it on the spot. The fear of this monster was suddenly gone. He was crossing the line again. I was ready to kill TH. What the fuck was he on about now-?!

"You mean to tell me that no one told you? I could've sworn that the Rangers were obligated to inform their members of a death in the family…" TH feigned his shock with a cold smile. My Captain staggered. It took one long moment of me suffering TH's cruel smile and the cold dread seeping down my spine before Captain Lewis's haggard face turned to me with a dire portent. She was trying to answer for something. Some kind of wrong perpetrated against me, a wrong that had been authorized by the Ranger Corps' own High Command themselves.

I could tell that Captain Lewis knew exactly what TH was on about, and she needed to say it before he could.

I could tell that just by how she was facing me, but refusing to meet my desperate eye.

"...Chief Warrant Officer Zane Bastard…" Captain Lewis began that solemn line around the same point that I started hyperventilating. She could finally lift her watering eyes to mine.

"...It is with my deepest condolences that I dutifully inform you of the death of your mother, Abigail Hobbes."

...I hit the fucking ground like a falling rock.

I was drooling and weeping into the road.

Every breath of mine began in a wheeze, and my each and every exhale ended in a squeal.

 _-This can't be happening…_

 _This can't be happening to me..._

" _-Mom?"_ I choked on that word when my gut forced every wind that I had left into my closing throat.

"Leukemia. Such a dreadful way to die…" TH's dry voice sounded in the background, but I could barely hear it over the blood rushing through my ears.

"...That's enough, Halcyon. You've had your fun." Captain Lewis's broken voice warbled.

-Oh no.

Theron wasn't done yet. He wasn't even close to being finished with me.

"Hardly, Captain. You neglected to inform your petty Officer of the late Abigail Hobbes's time of death…" TH actually sounded irritated with Captain Lewis. It took a moment for that implication to register in me, but before I could devote any process to it, I saw my Captain fall to her knees out of the corner of my apathetic eye.

I just wanted to die…

There was nothing left for me here…

Everything that I'd ever loved had been taken from me...

"...Zane?" Captain Lewis picked up my limp body off the road, and pulled me into a protective embrace.

"...I'm sorry…" Captain Lewis moaned.

"Tell him. Like you should have told him… Six months ago…" TH was fucking livid, his vocals shifting into that mix of hate-filled cries, mingling with all those screams of agony and all those pleas for mercy, all overlapping in those hundreds of horrid voices.

I threw Captain Lewis away from me, and dragged my furious self to my feet.

 _-Six months?!_

 _My mother had been dead for six months, and not one Ranger in all of the Corps could find the fucking heart to fucking tell me?!_

"-Zane!" Captain Lewis was still on her knees, and my lost breath came back to fill my fucked up lungs in a rabid tempest. My crying eyes were wide and hideous, there was spit flying from my clenched teeth every time I exhaled, and my temples were going to rupture for all the hot blood raging through them.

"Six… six months?!" I roared, before filling my torn throat with a shallow breath.

Six months. Well before I accepted my mission in Operation: Wounded Hearts. Well before I was promoted to Chief Warrant Officer. Almost two whole months before a Snorlax had mauled me and murdered my Echo…

They had all stabbed me in the back.

-All of them.

ACE. The Rangers. High Command. Captain Lewis. Colonel Howes.

 _-Every fucking one of them._

"If it is any consolation to you, Ranger... Your mother did not die alone." TH was speaking to me again, and my livid eyes turned to face the Devil of Kalos.

"There was one individual who remained by her side throughout the entire ordeal. One other person who loved your mother enough to hold her hand throughout her final moments…"

"-Don't listen to him, Zane! He's just trying to get inside your head-!"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU LYING BITCH!" I almost drew my knife when I rounded on Captain Lewis. Those pleading eyes of hers went stone cold dead when they met my hellish gaze. She knew it now.

 _-I was fucking lost._

"...Your father performed his marital vows honorably, and served as the sole individual who stayed by your mother's side, right up until the very end." TH wasn't smiling. He wasn't mocking me. There was something of a sympathy in that voice, and layered somewhere beneath it…

...There was a quiet respect.

"...But if you were to so request, I could repeat her last words to your father for you…"

-That's just Theron's fucked up way of trying to make amends. He wasn't trying to antagonize me with that dreadful offer. He wasn't trying to piss me off even further than I already was. But he sure as hell did.

"You can shut the fuck up too, you fucking freak." I hissed to his smirking Highness. Pariah hefted his sword.

"And you can go back to hell, you fucking abomination." I growled at his Aegislash. TH's smile was poison to my eyes, as he placed a restraining hand on the hilt of Pariah's blade.

"Thank you for your service, Pariah. You have served me nobly. You are now dismissed." TH banished his huge fucking Guardian with a soft voice and a gentle pat on the pommel. I guess the two of them had made up after that little fiasco in Lune, 'cause Pariah didn't even hesitate to carry out his new orders. That Ghost of a Knight silently departed back into the blackened lands from which he'd came, without even lighting up his red eye to remind Zane Bastard that an angry Ghost wanted him dead.

"Zane?" TH extended a hand to me.

"-Shall we make for Vermilion next?" TH smiled ever so charmingly when he addressed the grieving and pissed off Ranger just two meters away from him. I took my sweet time drawing those ragged breaths, before I stalked my way over to the Eidolon King's immediate vicinity. Through the penumbra of TH's Distortion seep, I could feel every one of his fucking Ghosts scratching at the fabric of reality, all of them desperately trying to break free of the Distortion and haunt my emotionally compromised ass for breakfast.

But Theron had them all under his command.

-And not a single one of his Knights were going to defy their King's sovereign decree.

I swatted TH's offered hand away from my person, and glared down into his shade-covered eyes.

"Alright, TH. I'll play your stupid fucking game for now. But don't you dare treat me like a fucking pawn. And you can quit playing your fucking mind games on me as well." I wasn't letting him get under my skin. TH could've killed me with a flick of his wrist, this mortal monster could have cast me directly into hell with the tiniest flicker of his thoughts…

-But I wasn't fucking afraid of the Eidolon King.

If killing me was the best that Theron could do…

-Then I had nothing to fear of TH.

I honestly thought that my heathen ass was Ghostproof.

 _-How fucking funny that thought seems to me now…_

"Of course, Zane. I had rather hoped that you would rise above this petty tribulation. And you have not disappointed me." TH folded his arms across his chest and beamed at me. The weird fuck was actually proud of me, but even if his pride in me was exposed for anything other than my boldness, I still wouldn't have given a fuck. We were doomed to meet on some kind of field, the Eidolon King and I.

We were fucking doomed to learn one another, and to measure ourselves off of what we discerned from the other in our union.

...But I'm getting ahead of myself.

-That part of the story will have to wait.

And following that bitter epiphany, the Devil of Kalos and the Fucking Bastard turned their backs on the fallen Blackhat Captain Lewis and her defeated Absol; before marching north, side by side, towards Cerulean's shuttle terminal.

"Now tell me one thing, TH…" I growled when we were out of the earshot of any ACE sponsored Blackhats.

" _Please_ , Zane. I would prefer it if you would refer to me as Theron." TH humbly requested.

"I could also call you Grave-Fucker if I wanted to, so why don't we just keep it at TH?" I spat. TH remained respectfully silent.

"...Now for what fucking reason did you drag me into this shitfest for?" I hissed. TH stopped walking for a moment, and that wicked smirk returned with aplomb. Meeting my eyes with those sequestered grey orbs of his, the Devil of Kalos uttered the following phrase-

" _-Inimicus inimici mei amicus meus est."_

-Well it's a damn good thing that I'd been brushing up on my latin.

" _-The enemy of my enemy is my friend."_

I coldly replied with the contemporary translation. TH's smile widened.

"Just so that we understand one another, Mister Bastard." TH chuckled. I could only glower at him.

"Like that's ever gonna happen." I growled through clenched teeth. TH just kept laughing his ass off. A buzzing from TH's front pocket sounded, interrupting that vile laughter; and the Eidolon King calmly drew some kind of communications device from his breast pocket. I don't know what kind of tech could have possibly stood up to an incessant barrage of Distortion screams, but it goes to figure that the Devil of Kalos would have had access to it.

"Dear me, can my Royal Court do nothing right? Forgive me, Zane. I must take this call in privacy. I will meet you at the Cerulean shuttle terminal shortly. Tram Three. Docking bay six. Private car. We make for Vermilion within the hour." TH gestured to the road north.

"You can keep that private car all to yourself. I'll ride my badge on economy. I'd rather smell the dirty hippies and listen to the screaming children than put up with your haunted ass for thirteen hours straight." I growled. TH kept right on smiling at me.

"Then by all means, Zane. Whatever makes you feel the most comfortable." The Devil of Kalos bowed to me with a wicked grin, before he turned his back on the glaring eye of the Fucking Bastard, and sauntered his merry way right into a newly rent Distortion rift.

When that screaming hole had sealed and taken the grey-eyed freak with it, I could finally drop my fucking guard. After I'd fought back the tears again, I headed straight for a flower shop and then followed it up with a trip to the postage office.

...I had to send a very late boutique of flowers to my mother's grave.

…

"Good evening."

"You've checked my White King. Congratulations, Halcyon. Now you have my personal attention."

"It's about time that you returned my calls, _Director_."

"...Just what are you getting at?"

"Only that your absence in my dealings with ACE has come across as, shall we say… A tad disrespectful?"

"Our agreement stated that you and I would never have contact-"

"Which was a rather foolish edict on your part, and a rather inconvenient stipulation forced upon my person."

"..."

"..."

"...Well now you've forced me to revoke my absence. If this isn't treason-"

"Au contraire, Director. Treason? Heh. I reserve such a maneuver for my last resort."

"You've claimed one of my Kings-"

"Correction. I've claimed _two_ of your Kings. Or do you mean to tell me that you have somehow eliminated the Black King from the board?"

"..."

"...Ah. I see. So Theron Halcyon is still irreplaceable?"

"I've got to hand it to you, Halcyon… You've played your hand damn well. You've managed to manipulate this entire situation in your favor. You're right. I can't replace you. The good King Arturia is that close to declaring war on Indigo. There's only one thing stopping him from sending troops over to our shores. There's another Kalosian King currently hosted in Indigo. A Kalosian King that actually maintains more public favor than Arturia does. The only thing holding King Arturia back from war with Indigo is your presence here. So what's your next move?"

"My next move depends entirely upon how reasonably the Director of ACE conducts this delegation."

"...So what do you know about Operation: Wounded Hearts?"

"Everything. I even know how it ends-"

"Bullshit. I don't buy into that whole religious cock and bull tripe about you seeing into time. You're no Prophet. The only thing those cursed eyes of yours can see is rot. Not time."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night, Director."

"Well then, _Prophet…_ Let's be perfectly hypothetical for one second. Let's say that you're only an aggravating thorn in my side. A necessary thorn. A thorn that I can't remove, but a thorn that I sure as hell don't have to patronize. Other than that contrived necessity, what do you really own as a bargaining chip?"

"Quite a bit, I would imagine-"

"The White King can be replaced. Go ahead and kill him. Zane is almost as much of an irritating a thorn in my side as you are. You have nothing-"

"I have no intentions of killing _our_ White King, nor holding him hostage as a bargaining piece. Did you truly think me so desperate that I would actually conform with such a shallow maneuver?"

"..."

"...I can't believe this. I am genuinely insulted."

"So you just kidnapped Zane to get my attention?"

"Kidnapped? For the love of the Crown…"

"Cut the theatrics, Halcyon. Spit it the fuck out. Why did you commandeer my White King?"

"...Very well. I suppose that I can be upfront with you."

"..."

"..."

"Well?"

"...I have but a meager handful of years left on this earth before my spirits steal me away from my necessary role. Your projected timeframe will take decades to bring fruition. Decades well beyond my own expiration. An expiration that neither you or I can afford. Operation: Wounded Hearts is progressing far too slowly. I am accelerating the proceedings."

"-Excuse me?"

"Director… You honestly thought me only a Crowned pawn, didn't you?"

"You aren't suggesting-?"

"Of course I am."

"...This won't accelerate your return to Kalos! We still need time to-!"

"Dear me, Director... I didn't come to ACE with a plea for a coup! I didn't flee Kalos like a wanted criminal! I simply departed by my own volition. I do not require your agency's aid in deposing Allan Arturia!"

"...Then why did you come to Indigo with a plea for asylum?"

"Now that question I would have happily answered if only you had granted me with a direct correspondence to your station sooner. But instead, you chose to operate from the shadows of Adamus Oscarin and your loyal ACE hounds, all of whom are now dead…"

"-Why did you come to Indigo, Halcyon?"

"I can answer that query by proposing a different question of which you can petition of me, Director. Ask me how long I've known about Operation: Wounded Hearts."

"...!"

"Ask me."

"...How long have you known about Operation: Wounded Hearts?"

"...Since before the Kalosian League's prior Seasonal Finals."

" _-How?!"_

"I have my means."

"Really? So why didn't you tell your King Arturia about it back then?"

"Because my means were interpreted as treason, and Allan Arturia foolishly favored sticking my head on a pike instead of heeding my advice."

"...So that's why you summoned up your Aegislash and stabbed him in the back with it?"

"It was the primary reason for my betrayal, yes."

"Are you sure that serving him as his dog for all those years had nothing to do with you twisting the knife in his spine?"

"I merely clarified that Allan Arturia's paranoia was the primary reason for my betrayal. But if I must also confess; a healthy amount of spite supported my secondary prerogative."

"Well, well… It's all starting to make sense now. Except for one key detail..."

"You want to know why I spared Allan Arturia's life?"

"Obviously. I can't discern a tangible reason for why he's still sitting on the Kalosian throne."

"Oh, you can't discern a reason, Director… _But my eyes can_."

"...What is that supposed to mean?"

"Give it time. You don't believe in religious cock-and-bull tripe. Or rather, you do not believe yet…"

"..."

"..."

"...Okay, Halcyon… I'll play along with that. But now I need to know something else. Something a bit more substantial than a Prophet's vague prediction. I want to know what your game plan is."

"Is this an acknowledgement of my deserved role in Operation: Wounded Hearts that I'm detecting?"

"I'm considering it. But I need to know your angle. Nothing you've done since entering Kanto has assisted Operation: Wounded Hearts in any way, shape, or form. As a matter of fact, you've been nothing but detrimental-"

"Really, Director? Your lack of foresight depresses me…"

"Then explain yourself. Starting with my dead Agents."

"Your nerve simply astounds me. I provided you with plenty of warning regarding my privacy and the consequences of its violation. And you dare to ask me-"

"You see, I don't buy that. Not for one second. You killed my surveillance teams because you're hiding something-"

"And of course, I assumed, incorrectly it appears; that after I had slaughtered enough of ACE's hounds... The master of those hounds would finally deem it fitting to grant me an audience with his person."

"..."

"..."

"...And Pewter? Would you care explaining to me what that catastrophe was all about?"

"My sudden absence in Kalos generated quite a bit of controversy. The Eidolon King, disappearing without a trace? Allan Arturia denouncing me as a coward who fled to the shadows in fear of his majesty? The previous League Champion, assuming my rightful station in my stead? Quite the controversy; wouldn't you say, Director? Some even dared to whisper that I was dead…"

"...So you used the Indigo League to project your presence in Kanto, just to reassure the Kalosian people that you still lived?! You almost started a war with that stunt!"

"Oh, yes… A war. A war that you barely noticed from your terrified roost in Indigo. You were too busy preparing for a war that would never have even reached your shores. You never noticed the real war, the war simmering in a distant nation… Did you not hear all of Kalos screaming my name in glory when their Champion reappeared in a foreign land, not as a cowardly shadow, but as a conquering King?"

"...That was one hell of a gamble, Halcyon…"

"And my purpose in Pewter was two-fold. You do of course, remember who else was present for my victory at Gymnase Meister Brock's Pit?"

"...Zane… The White King…"

"Precisely."

"...How does he work into your plan?"

"For the sake of _our_ Operation, I cannot overtly compete within the Indigo League. Someone else must claim Indigo's coveted Throne. But say that I had a confidant… a publicly recognized ally… an understudy of sorts…"

"...Oh my God. You're fucking insane."

"I thought that you would approve of my little adaptation to our Operation…"

"-Can you make it work?"

"Of course I can."

"..."

"..."

"...I completely underestimated you."

"-Should I accept that statement as an apology?"

"..."

"I don't have much time, Director…"

"You'll receive your credentials immediately. I'll have both yours and Zane's decorums delivered to your private car on the Cerulean shuttle. Congratulations, Vice-Marshal Halcyon. You're now a player in this game."

"If I may be perfectly frank, Director?"

"Of course you may speak frankly, Vice-Marshal."

" _-It's about fucking time."_

"Heh… Damn. And I thought that the people of Kalos refused to use profanity…"

"We reserve such vile expressions for deserving circumstances. This delay qualifies."

"Very well. I look forward to accessing your results. I do hope that you're up for the detail, Halcyon… This kind of Operation cannot tolerate any further forms of non-compliance…"

"I'm already invested in the outcome of Operation: Wounded Hearts, Director. Here's to a brighter future for all of humanity."

"And here's to the brighter futures of all those who brought humanity this new era of prosperity, Vice-Marshal."

"..."

"..."

"If the pleasantries have concluded, then I believe both you and I have obligations that require our immediate attendance. A most pleasant evening to you, Director."

"And the same to you, Vice-Marshal. I'll contact you directly from now on. Let's keep this latest development between the two of us for now. The situation in Kalos is still far from stabilized, and I don't need Arturia complicating things when he finds out about your promotion."

"I concur with your desire for secrecy. I will of course, divert mine own assets into calming the Kalosian Crown. Well, the Royal Court will know peace at least… But I'm quite sure that Allan Arturia will soon assume his preordained role when I've stripped him of all his other options…"

"...Glad to hear it. This meeting has concluded. I'm cutting the feed now."

"..."

"..."

"Well... That was predictable."

"..."

"...What is it, Pariah?"

"..."

"...I am aware of this. But it is necessary."

"..."

"We need more time. Let them believe what they want to believe."

"..."

"Yes, I know that now… I should have seen it sooner. But his empowerment is a risk that I must take."

"..."

"...No. I forbid it. You and I both know that Zane isn't just a puppet. And unlike my recent dealings with the Director of ACE…"

"..."

"-I have absolutely no intentions of betraying the _Bastard King._ "

…

 **.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.**

…

 _ **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**_ _Wrecker Cape. "Dragons, fairies, and foxes; Oh my!" Almost sounds like Comic-Con…_

 _-We Pokemon old-timers all have that one 1st-gen mon that we hold accountable for starting our lifelong obsession. Can you guys figure out which one of the "original" 151 Pokemon now carries the blame for inspiring Vile Slanders' monstrous works of Pokemon based fanfiction?_

 _Here's a surprise. It wasn't Gyarados._

 _It was fucking Onix._

 _-Hail to the King, baby._

 _By the way..._

 _-Are 66,000 word chapters just a little too big?_


	9. Chapter VIII: Non Es Amicus Meus

.

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 **The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero**

 _Written by,_

 **Vile M.F. Slanders**

 **.\\./.\\./.\\./.\\./.\\./.**

 ***T...T...T...T***

 **I-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-I**

 **\\_v_v_v_/**

 **\\-.-.**.-.-/**

 **V-._.-V**

 **\\.^./**

 **V**

 **.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.**

" _ **...Du Ut Des… (...I give that you might give…)"**_

 _-The Golden Rule._

 **-v-**

 **Chapter VIII: Non Es Amicus Meus**

"Do I have to read every blood-soaked page of this? Or has High Command finally granted me the clearance to kill your heartless ass instead?"

"I'm sure that you're familiar with your own regiment, Colonel Howes. You are permitted to peruse the documentation at your discretion."

"...So that's ACE's spineless way of telling an old-timer like me to buck the fuck up and swallow a load when I'd rather chomp down on the tip..."

"..."

"Item number one. Corporal García."

"..."

 _-.-_

 _ **Name:**_ _Carlos S. García_

 _ **Service Tag:**_ _19782242_

 _ **Division:**_ _Ranger Corps; 2nd Infantry Battalion_

 _ **Designation:**_ _Infantry (Support Unit)_

 _ **Regiment:**_ _Viridian PO-03_

 _ **Current Rank:**_ _Corporal_

 _ **Blood Type:**_ _O-Positive_

 _ **Sex:**_ _Male_

 _ **Ethnicity:**_ _Hispanic_

 _ **Eyes:**_ _Brown_

 _ **Hair Color:**_ _Black_

 _ **Height:**_ _5'11"_

 _ **Weight:**_ _172 lbs._

 _ **Age:**_ _17_

 _ **Status:**_ _Single_

 _ **-Official Statement:**_ _Born 1501, December 11th; Cerulean District, Jonas Hospital. Attended Cerulean's 3rd Precinct Public School in 1507; Graduated from Cerulean's 3rd Precinct Public School with a 2.3 GPA in 1515. Enlisted into the Ranger Corps in 1515, spent one year in Saffron's Fort Carren Academy. Finished basic training 14th in his class of 89 cadets. Applied to Viridian PO-03 in 1516 with the intention of completing Advanced Combat Training and Command Set Skills. Makes regular use of his Leave, and his corresponding course grades have since plummeted. Proctor notes exceptional situational awareness and quick adaptation to rapidly changing circumstances; However, a lack of determination and a perchance for practical jokes damages the unit's chances of ever achieving a position of command._

 _ **-Official Consensus:**_ _Of every Junior-Regiment unit made available to ACE's selection, Corporal García has spent the most time in company to Warrant Officer Bastard. Interactions between the two have suggested a camaraderie that is rather lacking in Warrant Officer Bastard's other peer relationships. In tapped radio communiques between the two, Warrant Officer Bastard has even offered coaching and reassurance to Corporal García, and Corporal García has expressed a certain admiration for Warrant Officer Bastard's duly achieved accolades. ACE's Analytic personnel have determined that Corporal García is the closest article that Warrant Officer Bastard has to a confidant._

 _ **-Verdict:**_ _Though the relationship is far from ideal, Corporal García remains our best "fallback gauge" should any other Echo Units expire before Warrant Officer Bastard manages to establish a relationship with his command. ACE has recommended Corporal García as a definitive Echo candidate, and Ranger High Command has approved ACE's recommendation._

 _-.-_

"What a waste of a halfway decent Infantry unit. Like I'm not already short on footsoldiers…"

"..."

"Item number two. Navigations Specialist."

"..."

 _-.-_

 _ **Name:**_ _Erin M. Stilts_

 _ **Service Tag:**_ _14556764_

 _ **Division:**_ _Ranger Corps; Office of Intelligence Affairs_

 _ **Designation:**_ _Navigations/Logistics Personnel_

 _ **Regiment:**_ _Viridian PO-03_

 _ **Current Rank:**_ _Private_

 _ **Blood Type:**_ _A-Positive_

 _ **Sex:**_ _Male_

 _ **Ethnicity:**_ _Caucasian_

 _ **Eyes:**_ _Blue_

 _ **Hair Color:**_ _Blonde_

 _ **Height:**_ _6'0"_

 _ **Weight:**_ _162 lbs._

 _ **Age:**_ _16_

 _ **Status:**_ _Single_

 _ **-Official Statement:**_ _Born 1502, May 8th; Celadon District, St. Mary's Hospital. Attended Celadon's 4th Precinct Public School in 1508; Graduated from Saffron's 3rd Precinct Public School with a 3.6 GPA in 1514. Enlisted into the Ranger Corps in 1516, spent two years in Saffron's Fort Carren Academy. Finished basic training 37th in his class of 78 cadets. Graduated from Intelligence Acquisition and Navigation 4th in his class of 18 cadets. Applied to Viridian PO-03 in 1518 with the intention of Frontier Expedition and Cartography training. Makes regular use of his Leave, and while his corresponding course grades have been maintained, his commitment to duty has suffered. Proctor notes rapid information processing and exceptional test scores, though the ability to apply his skill set in the field under duress has been quoted, "disappointing." Proctor recommends deployment to a secure Command under a tolerant Commander._

 _ **-Official Consensus:**_ _Due to the nature of Echo Squad's "mission," a Logistics and Navigation Specialist is required for appearances. Ranger High Command approves the deployment of Private Stilts due to their assessment of Private Stilts's disposability._

 _ **-Verdict:**_ _Given that the selection of candidates is limited to individuals who display a lack of commitment to the Ranger cause; ACE selected Private Stilts primarily for his skillset, rather than any other definitive synergy with Warrant Officer Bastard. Though we do not expect this coupling to foster an ascertainable relationship between Private Stilts and Warrant Officer Bastard, we have isolated Private Stilts from the list of candidates for one simple reason; Similar to Warrant Officer Bastard, Private Stilts displays a fondness for historical texts. ACE believes that this common ground could potentially pave the way for an emotional attachment forming between Warrant Officer Bastard and Private Stilts. ACE has recommended Private Stilts as a possible Echo candidate, and Ranger High Command has approved ACE's recommendation._

 _-.-_

"Yet another unit that I don't have enough of, being fed to the dogs for your agency's political games. So how does ACE manage their payroll corrections? Do they assassinate any Operatives who dare claim their pensions at retirement? Scratch that. I don't want to fucking know."

"..."

"Item number three-? Oh my God. I can't believe that High Command approved _this…_ "

"..."

 _-.-_

 _ **Name:**_ _Brenda H. Eckleson_

 _ **Service Tag:**_ _O-3589814_

 _ **Division:**_ _Ranger Corps; Uniformed Surgeon's Service_

 _ **Designation:**_ _Field Surgeon_

 _ **Medical Certifications:**_

 _-Class-2 Pokemon Physician/Pokemon Surgeon_

 _-Class-3 Human Physician/Human Surgeon_

 _ **Regiment:**_ _Viridian PO-03_

 _ **Current Rank:**_ _Lance Corporal_

 _ **Blood Type:**_ _AB-Positive_

 _ **Sex:**_ _Female_

 _ **Ethnicity:**_ _Caucasian_

 _ **Eyes:**_ _Blue_

 _ **Hair Color:**_ _Brown_

 _ **Height:**_ _5'6"_

 _ **Weight:**_ _118 lbs._

 _ **Age:**_ _16_

 _ **Status:**_ _Married_

 _ **-Official Statement:**_ _Born 1502, July 27th; Pewter District, Hestia Delivery Clinic. Attended Pewter's 4th Precinct Public School in 1508; Graduated from Pewter's 4th Precinct Public School with a 4.0 GPA in 1514. Enlisted into the Ranger Corps in 1514, spent one year in Saffron's Fort Carren Academy. Finished basic training 42nd in her class of 109 cadets. Entered into Saffron's University of Medicine in 1514 on the G.I Bill with the expressed ambition of becoming a multi-species medical practitioner; presently attending courses when on Leave; current University 3.8 GPA. Applied to Viridian PO-03 in 1517 with the intention of "Offering aid to the wounded". Makes regular use of her Leave to attend university courses in both Pokemon and Human medical fields. Proctor notes exceptional application of medical skills, the ability to operate effectively under duress, and "stalwart" determination at the surgeon's table. However; situational awareness is lackluster at best, willingness to engage hostile Pokemon is nothing short of non-existent, unit becomes emotionally compromised when faced with adversity, and Proctor harbors suspicions of servicemon coddling. Proctor recommends immediate remedial combat conditioning and an investigation into servicemon coddling allegations._

 _ **-Official Consensus:**_ _Viridian PO-03 Command has confirmed the relationship of a sexual nature in regards to Lance Corporal Eckleson's and Warrant Officer Bastard's interactions. Though Warrant Officer Bastard's list of sexually active partners is almost obscene in its enormity, Lance Corporal Eckleson is currently the only confirmed Junior-Regiment Unit known. Whatsmore, records indicate repeated trysts between Lance Corporal Eckleson and Warrant Officer Bastard, as well as Warrant Officer Bastard's expressed civility in social interactions with Lance Corporal Eckleson. This feeds reason to suspect the development of a healthier relationship between Lance Corporal Eckleson and Warrant Officer Bastard than that of Warrant Officer Bastard's other sexual partners. ACE has pressed Ranger High Command against their own reservations regarding Lance Corporal Eckleson's utility as a Surgeon and the projected fatality rate of the Echo Initiative. ACE believes that Warrant Officer Bastard harbors prolific enough emotional ties to Lance Corporal Eckleson which could very well compromise his ability to act as a Commanding Officer._

 _ **-Verdict:**_ _ACE has assured Ranger High Command that this sacrifice is necessary. Despite Lance Corporal Eckleson's potential service utility to the Ranger Corps, no other Echo candidate can fill the role of an "emotional liability" as well as Lance Corporal Eckleson can. ACE has recommended Lance Corporal Eckleson as a definitive Echo candidate, and Ranger High Command has approved ACE's recommendation._

 _-.-_

"...You people are fucking sick…"

"..."

"...Item number four. And here I thought that my heart was already broken…"

"..."

 _-.-_

 _ **Name:**_ _Peter M. Samuels_

 _ **Service Tag:**_ _18699845_

 _ **Division:**_ _Ranger Corps; Office of Intelligence Affairs_

 _ **Designation:**_ _Communications Operator_

 _ **Regiment:**_ _Viridian PO-03_

 _ **Current Rank:**_ _Private_

 _ **Blood Type:**_ _O-Positive_

 _ **Sex:**_ _Male_

 _ **Ethnicity:**_ _Caucasian_

 _ **Eyes:**_ _Brown_

 _ **Hair Color:**_ _Brown_

 _ **Height:**_ _5'5"_

 _ **Weight:**_ _141 lbs._

 _ **Age:**_ _16_

 _ **Status:**_ _Single_

 _ **-Official Statement:**_ _Born 1502, December 21st; Vermilion District, St. Augustine's Military Hospital. Attended Vermilion's 1st Precinct Public School in 1508; Graduated from Fuchsia's 6th Precinct Public School with a 3.2 GPA in 1515. Enlisted into the Ranger Corps in 1516, spent two years in Saffron's Fort Carren Academy. Finished basic training 69th in his class of 78 cadets. Graduated from Radio Communications and Relay Management 1st in his class of 23 cadets. Applied to Viridian PO-03 in 1518 with the intention of "building up his radio identity's rep". Unit makes regular use of his Leave, and is currently undergoing remedial PT courses. Proctor notes excessive nervousness even in contained situations, and frequent hesitation when given commands. Proctor recommends immediate reevaluation of unit's service in the Corps, and has suggested martial consideration of unit's honorable discharge under the premise of questionable mental constitution._

 _ **-Official Consensus:**_ _Another Echo candidate selected for his skillset rather than a previously established relationship with Warrant Officer Bastard, Private Samuels also possess the notable distinction of "Echo's variable." Due to his innately timid nature, Private Samuels will likely develop an adverse relationship with Warrant Officer Bastard; Though it has been noted of late, that Warrant Officer Bastard has exhibited mentorial behaviors in his interactions with individuals of a specific disposition. Most definitively, individuals of a emotionally compromised disposition. Though it is unlikely compared to the alternative, the possibility remains feasible that Warrant Officer Bastard could develop an amiable relationship with Private Samuels._

 _ **-Verdict:**_ _Due to his mandated skillset and his "variable" distinction, Private Samuels tops the candidate list of ACE's selected Echo Communications Personnel. ACE has recommended Private Samuels as a possible Echo candidate, and Ranger High Command has approved ACE's recommendation._

 _-.-_

"I can't believe that you're making me send this kid out on a suicide mission when he shouldn't even be wearing a fucking Beret…"

"..."

"...Item number five. Oh look. A little ray of sunshine in this shitstorm of inhumanities..."

"...?"

 _-.-_

 _ **Name:**_ _Amber E. Hail_

 _ **Service Tag:**_ _W-2131624_

 _ **Division:**_ _Ranger Corps; Department of Martial Engineers_

 _ **Designation:**_ _Field Technician_

 _ **Technician Qualification Grade:**_ _Class-5_

 _ **Regiment:**_ _Viridian PO-03_

 _ **Current Rank:**_ _Petty Warrant Officer_

 _ **Blood Type:**_ _O-Negative_

 _ **Sex:**_ _Female_

 _ **Ethnicity:**_ _Caucasian_

 _ **Eyes:**_ _Brown_

 _ **Hair Color:**_ _Red_

 _ **Height:**_ _5'10"_

 _ **Weight:**_ _99 lbs._

 _ **Age:**_ _31_

 _ **Status:**_ _Single (Divorced: Formally Married)_

 _ **-Official Statement:**_ _Born 1487, January 1st; Cerulean District, Jonas Hospital. Attended Cerulean's 1st Precinct Public School in 1493; Graduated from Cerulean's 4th Precinct Public School with a 3.2 GPA in 1501. Enlisted into the Ranger Corps in 1502, spent two years in Saffron's Fort Carren Academy. Finished basic training 93rd in her class of 113 cadets. Graduated from Mechanical and Electrical Engineering 27th in her class of 27 cadets. Applied to Viridian PO-03 in 1504 with the intention of serving the Corps. Makes regular use of her Leave, though no complaints pertaining to unit's lawful absence has ever been recorded. Proctor refuses to offer any recommendation other than an immediate discharge from the Corps. When pressed for the Proctor's reasoning regarding a martial discharge recommendation, Proctor was quoted, "Medical, honorable, or dishonorable? I don't give a shit. Just get it out of my uniform."_

 _ **-Official Consensus:**_ _Ranger High Command's own recommendation, ACE seconds Warrant Officer Hail's inclusion on the Echo Initiative. Easily the most hostile relationship Warrant Officer Bastard has maintained in the Ranger Corps, Warrant Officer Hail will likely serve as a "stress test" in Warrant Officer Bastard's first official Command. To ensure that Warrant Officer Bastard's ability to refrain from compromising the mission with his own prejudices, ACE places their faith in Warrant Officer Hail's ability to provide Warrant Officer Bastard with a constant source of controversial behavior._

 _ **-Verdict:**_ _Negotiations with Ranger High Command proceeded fluidly and concisely. ACE has recommended Warrant Officer Hail as a definitive Echo candidate, and Ranger High Command has approved ACE's recommendation._

 _-.-_

"...I take it back. Not even Amber deserves this…"

"..."

"...And of course, item number six. The Isaac to my Abraham. Only I doubt that some higher power is going to mercifully stay my blade…"

"..."

 _-.-_

 _ **Name:**_ _Zane Bastard (Birth name: N/A; Awaiting confirmation)_

 _ **Service Tag:**_ _W-2110573_

 _ **Division:**_ _Ranger Corps; Special Operations_

 _ **Designation:**_ _Field Technician/Combat Engineer/Special Operative_

 _ **Technician Qualification Grade:**_ _Class-3_

 _ **Ordnance Requisition Clearance:**_ _Class-5 (Currently suspended)_

 _ **SO Security Clearance Levels:**_

 _ **-Confidential Level:**_ _Permissible_

 _ **-Secret Level:**_ _Discretional_

 _ **-Top Secret Level:**_ _Restricted_

 _ **Regiment:**_ _Viridian PO-03_

 _ **Current Rank:**_ _Petty Warrant Officer (Promotion to Chief Warrant Officer pending)_

 _ **Blood Type:**_ _B-Positive_

 _ **Sex:**_ _Male_

 _ **Ethnicity:**_ _Mulatto_

 _ **Eyes:**_ _Hazel_

 _ **Hair Color:**_ _Black_

 _ **Height:**_ _6'2"_

 _ **Weight:**_ _189 lbs._

 _ **Age:**_ _17_

 _ **Status:**_ _Single_

 _ **-Official Statement:**_ _Born 1501, June 5th; Saffron District, Renault's Private Hospital. Attended Warwick's Independent School for the Gifted in the Celadon District in 1505; Graduated from Warwick's Independent School for the Gifted with a 4.0 GPA in 1514. Enlisted into the Ranger Corps in 1515, spent two year in Saffron's Fort Carren Academy. Finished basic training 1st in his class of 82 cadets. Graduated from Mechanical and Electrical Engineering 1st in his class of 19 cadets. Applied to Viridian PO-03 in 1517 with a request to switch designations from Field Technician to Combat Engineer under the premise, "Field-Tech is for pussies. Give me the hardcore shit." Unit has made negligible use of his Leave. Proctor notes exceptional situational awareness, exceptional performance under extreme duress, exceptional practice of tactical analysis and tactical deployment, exceptional commitment to directives, exceptional leadership element, exceptional adaptation to rapidly changing circumstances, flawless physical performance, and record setting achievements in unit's every field of practice. However, unit displays certain sociopathic behaviors, such as: Extreme aggression when interacting with his peers; a blatant disregard for martial etiquette when addressing his peers; frequent elitist and/or demeaning remarks while in uniform; a complete lack of social graces in recorded civilian interactions; is openly hostile in any confrontation, including those between the aforementioned unit and his superiors; and an investigation into the unit's private activities has revealed severe emotional trauma brought about by family separation, as well as confirmed cases of servicemon coddling. Proctor recommends that the unit's servicemon be executed if the unit fails to correct his own behavior regarding the training of his servicemon, and similarly recommends that a psyche evaluation be administered to validate the unit's mental stability. On a personal note, the Proctor quotes, "Zane Bastard is the best damn Ranger that I've ever seen in all my years of training cadets. The Corps has never known a soul so committed to the Ranger's cause as this crazy kid is. So it is with a heavy heart that I must acknowledge the simple truth: this Zane Bastard is also the single shittiest human being that I have ever met in my life."_

 _ **-Official Consensus:**_ _Warrant Officer Bastard remains the best candidate for the Ranger's Core Advocate in Operation: Wounded Hearts, despite Ranger High Command's fervent search for a substitution. One of Warrant Officer Bastard's most notable career goals is his expressed dream of earning a Black Beret and serving on one of the established Blackhat Teams. Ranger High Command has already placed Warrant Officer Bastard on the Prodigy's List as a future Blackhat member. Not only does this young Ranger embody the very goals of the Ranger Corps, he possesses both the drive and the skills required to succeed in his Blackhat venture. Though Ranger High Command has unsuccessfully tried to dissuade ACE of Warrant Officer Bastard's involvement in Operation: Wounded Hearts, no other candidate they have suggested from the Ranger Corps' Junior-Regiment has anywhere near the Core Advocate potential of Warrant Officer Bastard._

 _ **-Verdict:**_ _Against Ranger High Command's own reservations, ACE has mandated Warrant Officer Bastard's inclusion into Operation: Wounded Hearts as a Core Advocate. The Echo Initiative will test Warrant Officer Bastard's leadership element, as well as his tactical capabilities, and his resilience to trauma. At the conclusion of the Echo Initiative, Operation: Wounded Hearts will either possess its Ranger Core Advocate, or a postponed initiation date until another possible Core Advocate candidate from the Ranger Corps can be procured._

 _-.-_

"...I don't like it."

"I don't remember permitting you to have an opinion on the matter, Colonel."

"Listen here, _slick:_ I don't give a shit what ACE tells me to do. My orders come straight from High Command-"

"And High Command has already approved of my authority, Colonel. I'm afraid that your bureaucracy has colluded with ACE in this matter."

"Well tough cookies, _junior._ I blow High Command off on a daily basis, and I have absolutely no qualms about blowing your ass off as well."

"If I may offer you a bit of advice, Colonel Howes? It would be in your best interests to cooperate with ACE in this matter."

" _Son_ , the kind of shit I've seen in my forty-six years as a Ranger would make a squishy little fuck like you run screaming home to your momma, just to suckle every drop of nurturing comfort from her tit again. Your thinly veiled threats mean absolutely nothing to me; and on a personal advisory from me to you, Agent? Galapagos ain't napping in the back room. You keep threatening his Commanding Officer like that, and I won't even be able to stop my Blastoise from twisting your head right off of your navy-blue clad shoulders and shoving it straight up your military-posturing ass."

"Very well, Colonel. I grant you permission to have an opinion."

"..."

"..."

"...What kind of assurances do I have from ACE that will guarantee this situation's containment?"

"Is there a problem with the Echo Initiative, Colonel-?"

"Is there a fucking problem, Agent? ACE and High Command are ordering me to send a squad of my Junior-Regiment Rangers out on an intentional suicide mission without first informing them about it; my best Junior-Regiment Ranger is probably going to die for no Goddamn tangible reason; a pushead from ACE is impersonating a Military Official in _my_ office and putting _me_ on a leash; and ACE just informed me that a _fucking Delta-Five has been delivered to the designated Frontier coordinates in my martial jurisdiction…_ Does any of that sound like a fucking problem for a Regiment Commander of a Ranger Outpost, Agent?"

"...If I may ask you something personal, Colonel Howes? As his Colonel, do you believe that Warrant Officer Bastard will fail or succeed in the Echo Initiative?"

"I haven't got a fucking outfit in my regiment capable of tangling with a Goddamn Delta-Five. My only D5CU won't take orders from a single fucking Ranger under my command. And you're sending a group of kids out on a safari to dance with a Goddamn Snorlax. It's not that I don't have faith in Zane. It's that I cannot possibly conceive of any of them making it through this alive."

"Well, if Zane Bastard fails the Echo Initiative, then he clearly isn't the soldier that ACE needs."

"...I'm half tempted to kill you myself right now, High Command's authority be damned."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"That's him."

"Right. Now you play your fucking game as an Aide, Agent. This is my Ranger. I'm going to be the one relaying the information to him. That scarred-up Growlithe had better be the best Goddamn hound in the world… Because if my Rangers do end up dying for nothing… Then even if it's the last Goddamn thing that I will ever do... I will hunt you down, so that Galapagos and I can rotate shifts curb stomping your fucking skull in."

"..."

"Come in."

"..."

"Warrant Officer Zane Bastard, Reporting to a summons."

…

"...I failed the Echo Initiative. It all started out according to plan..."

"..."

"...Their plan."

"..."

"...I did exactly what ACE intended for me to do. I took command of an inexperienced unit, and through their reliance on their CO and my bullying antics as their CO…"

"..."

"...I got down and deep with every one of them…"

"..."

"...Then that Snorlax did exactly what he was supposed to, just not quite the way that ACE had intended…"

"..."

"...I was supposed to kill them. I was supposed to command every member of my unit to break off in separate divisions in the retreat, and one by one…"

"..."

"...I was supposed to kill them… I was supposed to use them as decoys, all for the fucking success of the mission…"

"..."

"...I was the fittest. The smartest. The best prepared. I was the one that stood the best chance of surviving…"

"..."

"...They wanted me to play the game, and turn my Echo into chess pieces… And for me to throw everything on the board at the fucking Snorlax, just to save _The White King…_ "

"..."

"...And I couldn't do it…"

"..."

"...Ohgawd…"

…

 _My mother…_

-All my little wounded monsters left behind in Cerulean.

 _My mother…_

-The Devil not three shuttle cars behind me, holding some inextricable chain over my fate.

 _My mother…_

-The lie. The hidden truths.

 _My mother…_

-ACE. The Ranger Corps. Betrayal.

 _My mother…_

-The Ghost haunting my ass from the Distortion.

 _My mother-_

 _-Is dead._

...Why?

Her smile… I could still remember her smile… That feeling of warmth. That feeling of love. That feeling of security…

Her smile…

...Now reduced me to tears…

 _-The Ghost haunting me, feeding from my misery._

There's no time to grieve. I can't afford to be weak right now.

Be him.

Be strong.

Be invincible.

 _...Be the Fucking Bastard._

...

I was gonna fucking kill him.

I don't care if every Secret Service in the world had failed before me. Someway, somehow…

...I was gonna find a way to fucking kill the Eidolon King.

And no sooner had I entertained the thought, then it was that my shuttle car's already unbearable temperature began to dramatically elevate another couple dozen degrees.

"...Are you listening to what I'm thinking, Thanatos?" I hissed to the Ghost haunting my ass.

The other passengers stationed on my car had already given me a wide berth. Most of the shuttle's commuters had forsaken their seats in favor of standing in the center aisle. But even with that feeble effort of distancing themselves from me, I was still drawing a lot of attention. The kind of attention that nobody feels comfortable garnering. A crowd of pale and sweaty faces all fixed on me, swarms of dead eyes staring at my person, a chorus of dry mouths rasping on the hot and dry air…

Dealing with a haunted Ranger wasn't something that my fellow passengers had agreed to in the terminal's ticket booth. The civis had managed to weather the onslaught of supernatural misery rather admirably thus far. But after four hours of increasingly agitated paranormal activity, the poor bastards were only seconds away from panicking.

"As soon as we get to Vermilion, I swear I'm gonna punch that creepy fucker right in between-"

A sudden sputter and hiss interrupted my venomous line, and the following roar of Ghostfire heralded the unnatural grey glow that began to fill the the shuttle car's interior. All of the electronics and lights flickered off, and the long shadows cast by the seats whispered and writhed with the abominable, as TH's opera lantern took upon corporeal form above my person.

After Thanatos's little appearance, and the appropriate amount of my fellow passengers' screaming, the shuttle car was surprisingly spartan.

Not many civilians wanted to stick around their purchased seats after a soulburner had made its unhallowed presence known.

-Not that I could blame them.

Not many Rangers wanted to hang out with a Chandelure either.

…

"Zane! Oh, do excuse me! I only have the one cup! Allow me to ring for another. I'm afraid that I wasn't expecting your company after such a vehement display in Cerulean!" TH slowly rose from his seat when I stepped into his private car unannounced.

-I still don't know how anyone can manage to sound so sincere when they're wearing such a cruel smirk.

"Not my choice. Rail authority's request." I growled, taking a chair in TH's private car, far from his occupied dining table. The Devil of Kalos reseated himself while shaking with one of his silent chuckles. The entire private car was already blacked out, courtesy of its prolonged exposure to TH's massive Distortion seep. The only source of illumination for the shuttle car's interior was the occasional tunnel light flying past the windows. I could barely see TH drinking his coffee amongst all the shadows.

"Well, it is rather more convenient for us both-"

"-Cut the bullshit and call your fucking soulburner off. I didn't come to this car for any reason other than getting rid of this fucking Ghost on my ass." I spat over TH.

Interrupting the Eidolon King was a move that I came to regret almost instantaneously.

"Zane, please. If you would be so kind as to allow myself to finish speaking, then we could prevent these little accidents from occurring altogether…" TH sighed into his coffee cup.

I would have cut him off again, just to be spiteful, but I had to take a moment to acclimate myself with the new setting imposed upon my person. Which was on my back.

-As I was being crushed up against the ceiling.

"I've got a better idea. Fuck you."

I'm a slow learner. When I want to be.

"Pariah, release him." TH rubbed his eyes in exasperation as I fell to the floor.

"...What is it with you people of Kanto?"

"What is it with you and your freaky fucking Ghosts?" I retorted, picking myself off the carpet.

-But Pariah would rather me stay on my hands and knees.

"Pariah, do contain yourself. There is no further point in punishing him. The Ranger would likely go to his undignified grave screaming obscenities. Leave him be." TH's tone implied that the Eidolon King was growing weary with the show.

The unyielding pressure exerted on my shoulder blades loosened ever so slowly, and I was permitted to rise to my feet.

"Gee, and here I thought that your fucking wraith was throwing me around the car under your orders." I growled, looking over my shoulder to the invisible Ghost standing right behind me.

I couldn't see the freak, but I could sure as hell could feel his presence. Even amongst Ghosts, Aegislashes radiated the most peculiar of Distortion seeps. In Pariah's penumbra, one was subjected to an almost curious feeling…

...Of unworthiness.

"You are contriving a most dangerous assumption. Not every spirit of mine answers to their master with complete obedience." TH was glaring past my shoulder as well, and a rather displeased tone had soured the Eidolon King's voice.

"I was wondering if you two had made up yet-" I couldn't have made my voice sound anymore snide if I had wanted to.

But that unseen sword edge pressing up against my throat might have inspired a slightly more respectful tone from my future person.

"Pariah… Abstain at once. You are embarrassing me in front of my _guest_."

-Or, you know, maybe attempting to murder his _guest?_

The blade fell away from my larynx, and that unworthy sensation faded away with it.

"For the love of the Crown… I swear that Ghost is going to be the death of me…" TH groaned, massaging his forehead with a knuckle. I was testing the waters again, but this remark of his paved the way for a jab from me.

-And the Fucking Bastard couldn't resist the dark humor anyways.

"Was that intentionally phrased so as to sound ironic?" I asked in deadpan. TH snorted.

"Perhaps… Either way, Zane-"

"-Why is your Godforsaken Chandelure haunting my ass?" I growled over TH.

Like I said. A slow learner.

"I was about to explain _that_." TH glared into the far corner of his private car, just as that aura of unworthiness made its resurgence.

"Zane. I understand that assigning one of mine revenants to act as your bodyguard may have its-"

"-You call this fucked up shit bodyguarding?!"

My ass. A wall. And one big angry Ghost.

-Enough said.

…

I woke up on my belly in TH's private car. A quick ocular sweep of the joint told me all of one thing.

-I was alone.

"You fucking cunt…"

My head was sticking to the carpet, thanks to the pool of blood that had accumulated beneath my face.

"Goddamnit..." I growled, pressing my hand against the dried gore crusted on my left temple. I attempted to rise to my feet, but the sudden vertigo floored me for even trying.

-Yeah. I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Pariah had not been particularly gentle in his last assault. That asshole of an Aegislash hadn't been very gentle with me at all.

"TH… I'm gonna fucking kill you-"

A roar of Ghostfire interrupted me, and I dropped my head back into the bloodstained rug with a groan.

-I still had TH's babysitter looking out for my unconscious ass. Ode to joy.

"...Why the Chandelure? Why the fucking soulburner?" I started beating my forehead off the puddle of blood.

Of all his Goddamned Ghosts, why would TH assign to me the one that I hated the most?

-Probably because Theron enjoyed being a subtle dick.

"...I'm gonna fucking kill you."

…

TH never returned to his private car. Meaning that I had the joint all to myself, and the soulburner haunting my ass, for the remainder of the voyage.

I hadn't a clue where TH had disappeared off to, nor had he left me a message of any sort within the compartment, so I helped myself to his private car's bar and emptied the entire stock of hard liquor within the first two hours.

Seven hours later, a more or less sober Zane Bastard stumbled his way off the shuttle car. Upon leaving the underground, I found my haunted self in Vermilion City's exterior civil processing and identification station.

Vermilion City.

The fact that they call it a "City" fucking astounds me.

Vermilion City isn't a city. You can tell that just by looking at the outlying defenses.

Sure, there's a perimeter wall. Almost three times as high and as twice as robust as the standard city wall, and decked out in state-of-the-art pneumatic turrets. And did I mention that Vermilion City's walls are ugly? Like barren concrete slabs positioned with raw military efficiency ugly?

What about the City Guard? Yep, Vermilion has one of those too.

Except Vermilion's version of the of the City Guard plods around in mobile-assistance exoskeletons, just because the Military's defensive units like to flounce around the city with their cumbersome 25 mm pneumatic autocannons.

Those guns haven't been used for live combat in almost thirty years, but hell if they and their heavily armored operators don't make for a welcoming sight.

To note: All the scary-ass techno toys that the Ranger Corps has deemed "too unreliable" for our rugged Frontier work?

-Those are all the staples seen on both the Military's recruitment posters and their APUs stationed within Vermilion Bastion.

Yep.

Vermilion City isn't a City.

Vermilion City is Kanto's Military Stronghold with a civilian sector stationed right in between the Military's Head Offices and the terraced portside fortress.

-So Vermilion City isn't exactly a tourism hotspot.

All of Vermilion's human traffic is generally limited to the Military's rotation of recruits and the immigrants passing through citizenship processing.

Nothing quite like stepping off a ship from Unova, after having fled that nation's perpetual state of self inflicted genocide, only to be greeted by all the warm faces from the Kantonese Military.

-And their huge fucking guns.

There's a reason why crime and civil disobedience in Vermilion is the lowest recorded in the nation.

-Because Vermilion City's Military Governors placed the entire city under Martial Law thirty years ago when a fledgling Indigo Congress ordered for the Military's dissolution of power.

And that declaration of Martial Law has stood in effect ever since.

Yep. The Military didn't quite feel like parting with all of its political power.

If you get caught stealing in Vermilion?

-Court Martial. Even for Civilians.

If you get cited for Indecent Exposure?

-Court Martial. Even for Civilians.

If you get reprimanded for failing to salute a Superior Officer?

-Court Martial. Even for Civilians.

If you are suspected of drug trafficking, sex-trade, smuggling, piracy, illicit marketing, grand larceny, impersonating an Officer of the Military, murder, rape, arson, embezzlement, Tauros stampeding, etc…

-Court Martial. As a formality. Followed by your public execution. Even for Military personnel.

Vermilion City is not a kind place for anyone unfamiliar with martial etiquette or individuals with a penchant for unseemly social adherences.

That said, if you can conform to the Military's dogma, keep your nose out of official business, and maintain a quiet and dignified existence…

...Then Vermilion City is one of the safest and cleanest cities that you'll ever find in the entire world.

The schools and hospitals are staffed by trained Military personnel, so your health and education is guaranteed to be propagantastic.

The streets are meticulously kept clean by the civilian sector, and that cleanliness is constantly maintained by the Military personnel.

Parades are a common affair, and there's always something amazing to see ported at the docks.

Whether it's a multi-million Sandz Hoenn Luxury Cruise Liner on a refueling stop, or one of the Military's Destroyer Class Wailords careening in the shallows for a thorough defouling.

-And Vermilion City's bars serve imported booze on tap. Not to mention the local cuisine covers a wider expanse of culinary genres than just your plain-jane Kantonese.

So if you prefer a busy, disciplined, secure, and modest life…

...Then Vermilion City has what it takes to sate your spineless appetite.

…

I fell into line with my fellow passengers upon exiting the shuttle's terminal. Actually, I more or less staggered there. And when I finally regrouped with the tunnel weary crowd basking off the shuttle's gloom in the early dawn air...

...Thanatos's Distortion seep made damn sure that nobody wanted anything to do with my tipsy ass.

We were still outside of the city walls and waiting for the Military to process our group of visitors. My Ranger Badge wasn't going to earn me any favors here. Serviceman or not, I was going to have to stand in line with all the civilians and fumble with my identification documents.

But a rather burly and unpleasant smelling Military grunt wearing a Corporal's insignia and accompanied by a Reconnaissance Class Murkrow, took my intoxicated ass by the shoulder, and wordlessly steered me into a much shorter line.

Right behind his smug majesty, TH.

"So good of you to have finally arrived, Zane! How was the shuttle ride? A bit dreary?"

-Goddamn, that evil smile of his was gonna make me sick.

"The trip would've been a whole helluva lot better if some grave-humping asshole hadn't sicked a pair of his Ghosts on me." Haunted or not, I could still answer TH's pleasantries with my own, and every word of mine was accompanied by a Ranger's spitting grimace of a grin. TH just chuckled, before pressing a small black leather case into my hands.

"You'll be wanting that shortly." TH smiled at the bemused expression on my face.

"So what is this? The VIP line?" I grunted, ignoring the black case in my hands and gazing around.

"...Not quite." TH shrugged as my eye fell upon an overhanging sign that denoted our line's designation.

- _F5 Processing_.

"Oh, you've got to be shitting me…" I groaned, glaring further up the line.

"Just one of the many nuisances of traveling alongside the spirits, Ranger." TH idly droned.

A purple robed ninja with a gas mask draped around his collar. A heavy-set middle-aged women decked out in jewelry fashioned from twisted cutlery. A scarred up man wearing a short cape and body armor festooned with the Blackthorn clan's black-faced-dragon insignia. A twelve year old girl wearing absolute pink, who was vividly engaged in a conversation with her Clefairy doll. And a trio of blue Hakama donning nuns, all fixing their lifeless eyes on TH and me, clearly perturbed by the presence of another Channeler who didn't hail from their religious community of Lavender Town.

-The freak line. Reserved exclusively for the suicidal whack-jobs who take it upon themselves to train the environmentally hazardous types of monsters that are generally better left for dead.

"...So not even the Eidolon King can escape due processing, huh?" I glowered at TH, whose shoulders shook with a silent chortle.

"Not without inviting needless bloodshed and inspiring further distrust. Diplomacy is a social stipulation that I support, Ranger." TH pleasantly replied.

"Well, at least you won't be lonely in Vermillion. Judging from their looks, I think those Lavender Town nuns are popping lady boners for you-" I was speaking loudly enough to be heard by the rest of our line, all while gracing the pale faced trio of feminine Channelers with my nastiest grin.

"-Not _too_ hard, Pariah." TH silently interjected.

Then my face was in the dirt again, as that fucking invisible Aegislash silenced me with a shield bash to the rear of my dome.

"I apologize for my associate's crass remark. He appears to have sampled a tad too much indulgence on the shuttle ride here." TH politely addressed the chuckling line, directing the closing statement towards his unsullied fellow Channelers.

"A Kantonese Ranger and a Kalosian Channeler. Interesting combination." Pariah's oppressive weight withdrew from my person as the purple robed ninja moved in to assist me to my feet.

"-Not my choice in combinations." I growled, dusting off the front of my coat.

"You're his assigned escort?" The ninja asked, as he adjusted the shoulders of his robe.

"Obviously. The Ranger Corps are understandably leery of my prerogative in Kanto. As such, they have assigned one of their units to monitor my activities." TH explained to the ninja.

"You're on the Ranger's F5 Blackwatch list? What the hell did you do to deserve that?" The Fuchsia ninja's eyes widened.

"...Nothing that I care to discuss in an introductory conversation. But on the topic of the F5 Blacklist, would you kindly explain to a foreigner how the Fuchsia separatist movement is progressing?" TH smiled at the ninja, who visibly balked at the mention of the separatist movement.

"...That's none of your concern." The ninja recovered from TH's insinuation just a moment too late.

"...Never received the clan's covert social training, did you, rebel?" I asked with a grimace. The ninja glared at TH and me, before turning his stony face towards the front.

"Curious that a separatist would attempt to enter Vermilion, given the Military's political relationship with the Kurosawa Clan…" TH murmured in that pleasant tone of his. The ninja began to shake.

"I wonder why he wore the classic robes. Wouldn't it have been easier to sneak into Vermilion under the guise of a civilian?" I carried on in a suspicious voice.

"...I'm not here on a separatist mission, and my record clearly states-" The ninja began.

"-I'm more interested in what your criminal record doesn't state, Mister Hashimoto. An improvised chemical explosive designed around a Wheezing charge? Detonated in downtown Fuchsia? Fourteen killed and thirty-seven more wounded? Such destructive actions warrant honorable mention on the F5 Blacklist…" TH shut the ninja up for good with that one. I could see the murderous purple bastard itching to run.

"Nevertheless, as you have previously mentioned, your criminal record is free of even suspicion. An excellent record for your admittance into Vermilion. Which in turn, is excellent news for your reunion with your son. I do hope that his ship arrives in port safely tomorrow. The waters between Vermilion and Olivine are reputed to be rather treacherous…"

-There's nothing secret or sacred to TH. No blow is too low, and no mannerism is too condescending. The freak can tear down anyone with his words alone, which was being demonstrated in TH's exchange with the Fuchsia ninja.

"...I'm sure that he'll arrive safe and sound. Thank you for your concern." The ninja regressed into his clan's imperialistic formality when he closed the conversation, and then quickly left the F5 line in favor of a lonely stroll into the northern Gouge.

Leaving me to glower at the Eidolon King as we waited to be processed.

"...A Ranger escort, huh?" I muttered in an undertone.

"Your station in the Corps affords us with a convenient diversion from your official agenda with ACE." TH answered me in a whisper.

"Right. How much longer do you think that bullshit line is gonna last?" I growled.

TH made a quick head count of the remaining individuals in the F5 line.

"Not much longer, Zane. Not much longer at all." TH grinned.

-That grin meant trouble, as I would soon come to learn of my "supervised ward."

TH didn't pick anymore verbal exchanges with the remaining members of our line. Though the progression was held up by the fairy girl, who somehow managed to maintain a three person conversation between herself, her Clefairy doll, and the Inspection Officer who was concerned about the legitimacy of her minor's Training license. After the insane little twerp had been detained by the Military for a pending review, the inspection advanced more or less casually.

-More or less casually, forbearing TH's colossal Distortion seep fucking with the street lamps and the entire line's disposition.

I was beginning to realize why the people of Kanto had graced his malevolent person with the moniker, " _The Hole."_

-Theron just kind of sucks the life out everything around him with his existence alone.

I'd stomached TH's Distortion seep several times in the last month. Fuck, I'd suffered prolonged exposure to his radiance of freaky shit. But after the first half hour of idling in hell had passed, even I was beginning to see things that weren't actually there.

-What kind of things?

The kind of shapeless shit whose very image terrifies you in your forgotten nightmares. The kind of evil crap that lingers in the far corners of your awareness, the gangly fucking figures that disappear when you try to look at them directly. The same kind of crazy and elusive apparitions whose every unnatural movement brings a crawl to your skin and a chill to your blood.

Yeah, standing in the Eidolon King's presence was akin to a cocktail of emotional depression and a bad LSD trip. It wasn't something that I wanted to repeat anytime soon in the future. But unfortunately for me…

...It was gonna be a while before Theron and I parted ways.

The only individuals not adversely affected by TH's aura were the Lavender Town sisters, but they had never once peeled their dead eyes off his pleasantly smiling face. I didn't know if the trio was checking him out or sizing him up, there was that much sheer blank emanating from their hollow expressions.

When the dumpy middle aged Psychic Trainer moved on through the admittance gates, the three Channelers finally broke their ocular contact with TH in order to address their own identification and documentation. The sullen Inspection Officer looked about as happy as a rain cloud after having dealt with the Fairy Trainer's conniption fit, but who could blame a motherfucker for getting angsty when it's his job to handle freaks like these on a daily basis?

-I could blame the selfish son of a bitch. If it wasn't for Thanatos haunting my ass, then I would have been able to utilize the standard line. If I had used the proper line, then I could've been within the Vermilion City walls by now. And if I was in the fucking ugly walls right now, then I could've been sampling the Military's warped idea of hospitality.

Who gives a fuck about the unhaunted Inspection Officer? His job was just temporarily miserable. My life was looking absolutely hellish for all of the foreseeable future.

"...You ever gonna take this Ghost back, TH? Cause I would really prefer it if both you and your lamp just went ahead and threw yourselves in the sea without me." I spat, as the Blackthorn Dragon Trainer ahead of us was approved for admittance.

"In due time, Zane. All in due time." TH chided, before stepping forward to take his place at the Inspector's booth.

"Identification, passport, proof of F5 registration, and stated intent for your visit." The Inspection Officer grunted at TH without even looking up from his paperwork.

"Confidential." TH replied. The Inspection Officer glared up at TH after tossing his pen aside in irritation.

"Identification, passport, proof of F5 registration, and stated intent for your visit, _now._ " The Inspection Officer growled. TH only smiled at him.

"Do I have to get security involved with these proceedings? Or are you going to procure the requested documentation?" The Inspection Officer hissed at TH.

I could feel something like tattered fabric brushing up against my side when the Inspection Officer locked eyes on TH's shades…

"I would advise you against such a conspicuous action, Sergeant Weisman." TH stated cooly. The Sergeant worked his mouth. There was a casual authority in TH's voice, bringing a pause to the Inspection Officer's deliberations. Well, both TH's tone, and the invisible-yet-disturbingly-detectable host of misery-hungry Ghosts closing in around the booth were bringing a pause to the Sergeant's inquisition.

"What's with the sunglasses? The day is still a little too new for a fashion statement, don't you think?" The Sergeant was treading carefully now. He had a suspicion that he was dealing with something unusual here, but even so, the Inspection Officer had a duty to perform.

"My apparel is worn as a courtesy. And you need not concern yourself with my compromised sight. I can see quite clearly in the dark." TH grinned. I was doing my damndest not to shudder at that last remark.

"Take them off. Now." The Inspection Officer knew that he was getting fucked with, but he needed an official statement authorizing TH's clowning around before he would even consider letting this freak off the hook. So exercising his questionable authority was the Inspection Officer's only recourse for retaliation.

"Very well." TH sighed as he removed those fancy fucking shades, and then met the Inspection Officer's glare with those naked grey eyes of his.

-I should've warned the Inspection Officer. He was just trying to do his job, and TH was bleeding him out for a laugh. That kind of shit just isn't right.

The Inspection Officer held TH's gaze for almost half a minute. The transformation was unbelievable. The Sergeant's ruddy complexion turned ice cold white, before shifting to sick as shit green. Then those stunned eyes just about popped right out of Inspection Officer's head. I could've sworn that this Skinhead was starting to lose weight, 'cause those cheeks of his went hollow and those temples sank right up against the sphenoids of his skull. Bullets of sweat rained from the Skinhead's brow, and a slight quiver to his frame hinted at the encroaching climax…

...Before the Inspection Officer blinked, and freed himself from TH's twisted vision of hell.

-To his credit, the Skinhead didn't vomit. But the rolling in his adam's apple certainly told of the struggle he mounted to hold down his lunch.

"...Do you know what the penalty is for assaulting a soldier in uniform?" The Inspection Officer managed to choke a threat at TH through the lingering grits in his throat.

-I'll bet it's not a black eye for minors…

"Insignificant in comparison to the punishment for interfering with an ACE Executive's right to unbarred passage…" TH repositioned his shades over those cursed eyes, and deftly supplied the Inspection Officer with a black leather wallet.

There was a badge in that wallet, alongside some kind of registration card.

If the fucking Skinhead thought that he'd had it rough in TH's horror-gaze, then it was nothing compare to his reaction upon reviewing TH's decorum.

" _-Vice-Marshal?!"_ The Inspection Officer froze solid with his own hissed exclamation.

My ass locked up on the spot as well.

 _-When did Theron Halcyon become a fucking Executive of ACE's bureaucracy?!_

"There will be absolutely no documentation pertaining to myself or my associate. All surveillance records of this encounter will be destroyed. You will not speak of this to anyone. Consider this entire exchange _confidential…_ And know that high treason will be the charge brought against you for violating that confidentiality." TH waved me over to his side.

"If you would provide the good Inspection Officer with your badge, Agent…" TH somehow managed to sound oh-so pleasant when he addressed me, even with all that rank smug radiating from his nasty grin. My eyes shot down to the unopened black leather bound case that lay forgotten in my cold hands.

-Oh, hell no…

Yep. There it was. If it was a forgery, it was a damn good one. My trained Special Operative eyes couldn't locate a single missing hint of legitimacy.

An ACE Agent's badge.

-With my service tag written on the registration card.

I offered the the badge to the Inspection Officer, but he'd already seen enough. He handed us our VIP papers and returned TH's badge, before the Sergeant hastily waved us through processing without another word.

"...Why couldn't you have just given him the badge and none of the lip?" I shuddered when TH and I were ushered over towards Viridian City's civilian access gate.

"Really, Zane? Don't tell me that you've never abused the authority of your station for entertainment before?" TH smiled at me.

-Now I was beginning to feel sick.

I couldn't defend myself from that accusation, and TH knew it.

"...How did you so tastefully phrase it back in Lune? Ah yes. _You are one messed up son of a bitch, TH._ " TH was living my numb disposition up. He had me cornered like a rubix cube.

"...I guess that makes us _two_ messed up sons of bitches, Zane." TH was shaking with that creepy signature silent chuckle of his. And I was just barely managing to move my feet in pace with his.

-After what I'd already gone through in my self-reflected comparison to Misty Willows…

...I was far from comforted to learn that there was a possibility even worse than the Tomboy Mermaid's example.

…

"Vermilion City. What a novelty." TH remarked upon our admittance to Vermilion main.

-I had to agree with my haunted "Executive." Vermilion City is most certainly a novelty.

You will you never see another urbanized fortress quite like it.

The architecture of Vermilion City defies comparison. It's almost as if an innovative architect fashioned a mold for a breathtaking metropolis…

...Before the Military poured concrete into this architect's mold, and then follow it up by draping patriotic flags from every eave, as though they were attempting to conceal the foreboding hideousness of it all.

-It didn't work. Every building looked like an unpainted prison. Every structure was a sloped sided block without any meaningful windows to speak of. Beyond the flags, Vermilion's decorum was rather sparse, although there was no shortage of antique howitzers and model MBTs on display at regular intervals along the main.

"I can't believe that they call this a city…" I muttered, glaring down a procession of Class A garbed Skinheads, who were marching their way across an intersection further down the main.

"Is it really that ugly?" TH asked, removing the shades from his eyes and partaking a sweeping view of the vista. Thank God he wasn't looking my way.

"...Oh my."

-Yeah, TH. It really is that ugly.

TH replaced his shades with a weary chuckle, and stared further down the main. At the far end of Vermilion's central lane, the Naval Port could just be seen through a distant gap in the buildings.

"Well then, I suppose that we should-" A minor buzzing cut TH off mid sentence. Smiling to himself, TH slowly drew out his pager, before glancing at the display with a snort.

"It's for you." TH grinned, handing me his communications device. I took it from him with a cold sensation burrowing into my bowels.

 _-Zane. Arizona Street, M2114. Sixth Floor. Suite 518. Your ETA: Twenty minutes._

"Duty calls, Agent." TH was smiling like a devil when he took his pager back from me.

-Yeah. Now I really was scared shitless.

"...What do you mean: _Agent?_ " My nervous voice asked, as I indicated my Ranger's beret.

"Hurry now, Agent Bastard. Don't keep your Executives waiting. Oh, and do tell the Nine Lives that Theron Halcyon sends his best regards." TH smiled, waving me away.

"Thanatos, direct Zane to me when ACE is through debriefing him. And kindly wait outside the meeting hall. I'm quite sure the old Nine Lives hasn't forgotten about that little _incident_ in Lumiose…" TH turned his back on me, and headed east on his merry way towards the civilian sector.

"What the hell is going on?!" I shouted after TH, but the Devil of Kalos didn't pay my person any heed. TH just carried on alone, leaving me in the street with nothing more than his thrice damned soulburner.

"...Right. Well at least I have you to light my way, Thanatos." I sarcastically growled to the invisible Ghost.

TH's fucking lamp responded by violating the mundane realm, as Thanatos burned a hole straight through the fabric of reality with that vile opera lantern of his alight and sputtering.

"...Yeah, yeah. Fuck you, _and_ the fuck who Channels you." I spat at the Chandelure hovering above me.

Thanatos hissed his flames at me, but TH's orders prevented the wraith from doing anything more.

"Goddamnit. I could really use my dog right now…" I grumbled, trying not to think of my missing mon as I headed south towards ACE's designated coordinates with Thanatos in tow.

…

I made it to the locale with minutes to spare. The meeting place was an Embassy. More specifically, the Kalosian Embassy. Why I was rendezvousing with an ACE Agent here was beyond my comprehension. But no sooner had I pushed open the entrance hall's front door, then it was that dear old Thanatos faded back into the Distortion, and took his bloody haunting with him.

As I stepped out of that Ghost's Distortion seep, I was vividly reminded of what life is like without a wraith bleeding you for your emotions. The physical sensation alone felt as if I had been sloughing through thick mud all day, and then quite suddenly, I was was weightlessly striding across firm ground again. But the emotional sensation of relief?

-I almost started crying in joyful disbelief at just how wholesome the world feels without the shadow of a Ghost clouding your perception.

Fuck the Ghosts. I don't know how anyone can tolerate Channeling them. One day's worth of haunting was almost enough to break me, but a lifetime bonding?

...Yeah. Just fuck the Ghosts, and the crazy nutjobs who willfully feed them.

I went straight for the elevator when I reached the embassy's granite lobby. The security personnel stationed at every corner and doorway acted as if I wasn't even there. Which meant that I was in the right place.

ACE wasn't gonna let foreign armed forces waylay one of their Agents, even within that foreign nation's own Embassy.

As soon as I entered the elevator, the liftman punched in the sixth floor button and fixed his eyes on the wall. He wouldn't even look at me, or speak a word as the lift took us to the preordained floor. This was about as discreet as ACE could get. I was out in open and in plain sight, my appearance far from inconspicuous in a Ranger's green BDU while I walked right through the Military's provincial city state…

...And yet, inexplicably, no one dared to take any notice of me.

The doors to the elevator opened, and I stepped out into a softly lit lacquered wood and red velvet gallery hall. If the lobby had borne hints of grandeur and wealth, then this hallway possessed a more personal aspect of that projection. This was the residence level for the Embassy's ambassadors and visiting diplomats from the Kalosian nation. These were people who were accustomed to the highest luxuries. But the prosperous are always few in number, so there was all of eight doors in this one hall, meaning that it didn't take me too long to find Suite 518.

I stopped right before the stained mahogany door.

Was I supposed to walk right in, or knock first?

-Was there a secret code?

...Probably, but I just hammered out the classic six-note knock of jokes as I calmed myself against the uncertainty.

-That calm didn't last very long.

I began to feel a ringing in my dome, and I immediately retaliated to the mental invasion by rehearsing Quintus Horatius Flaccus's ode, " _Treacherous Girl."_

-There was no way in hell that I was letting ACE get another psion into my head.

I had managed to detect the fucker when it tried to reroute my synapses, all in its effort of shutting down my faculties, but my repetitive mental processes wasn't exactly making the psion's job easy. Everytime it tried to interfere with a section of my brain's electrical activity, another node would kick in to compensate for the hot wired nerves. And as soon as the psion tried to pin down those compensating synapses, the nerves it had just shut off would arc back into production, and continue carrying on with the music as if nothing had happened.

But denying the psion's mental invasion wasn't only preserving my own self-dictation. Mon's brains are nowhere near as complex as a human's brain is. Locating, pinpointing, and subjugating crucial cognitive nerves with extremely fine tuned EM emissions is hard enough for a psion to perform on a dumb beast. But humans have a lot more rational activity heating up their lobes than any other critter found in nature. Failing to weave an electromagnetic net over my evasive brain wasn't just consuming the psion's reserves of Bio-EM charges.

I was tongue-tying the psion's own brain as its limited perception struggled to comprehend the impossible neurological functions that were eluding its every attack.

-Poetry. You can render brain fucking psions absolutely helpless with poetry.

They just don't grasp such a complex and abstract concept, which can trigger every rational faculty within the human mind, even when it's being repeated ad nauseum directly into the mon's own neural receptors.

The battle lasted all of a minute before the presence in my head withdrew. Which meant that whatever psion had been poking around in my dome had one hell of a mental constitution. Most psions give up within the first ten seconds if they can't put a leash on you in that time frame.

But this was ACE, and their Waterloo bred and trained psions were every bit as tenacious as their Agents.

-Speaking of which…

The door to suite 518 was opening. And judging from the violent rattling of the doorknob, the greeter wasn't very happy with me. That, or they didn't quite know how to handle a doorknob gracefully.

Or it could have been "Option C."

- _Both of the above._

My greeter wasn't human. As a matter of fact, my greeter just barely registered as a living thing to my startled brain.

Doug's knife was out of its sheath and swinging for the psion's eyes, just as flurry of tentacles lashed me to the opposite wall.

Grey, dessicated membranes peeled away from its rosy internal tissues, and a dirty beak snapped open between the tiny gelatinous eyes that were hollowly staring into my livid glare. The head was almost human in its construction, minus the bulging pectoral cranium and the massive ragged fenestra pits that served for cheeks.

-And every other similarity to a human visage was utterly dismantled by the wreath of a dozen three-meter long muscular hydrostats, which were blooming out from the base of its skull like a grotesque and living hairdo. And each one of those boneless appendage had me pinned up against the gallery's lacquered wall.

A Malamar. One of the most fucked up species of mon which combines the distinctive traits of Interlopers and psions alike. They're the only known species of mon capable of interdimensional psionic manipulation, and as such, Malamars are prided by Secret Services across the globe for their inherent double-whammy capabilities in covert applications and interrogations.

-But I wasn't really thinking of that right now. I was too busy trying to kill one of the most disturbingly ugly creatures to have ever been seen by mortal man.

A Malamar's physiology is reminiscent of a bloated cephalopod that was first dredged up from the ocean's abyss, and then left to rot in the baking heat of the sun for a few days.

-And they smell just about as good as the previous analogy would suggest too.

"Agent Bastard, if you would kindly disarm yourself, then _Lugosi_ would feel obliged to release you."

-Oh fuck me. That was a Kalosian accent. Not a tune that I wanted to hear after having dealt with TH's sinister dialect for a whole Goddamn day.

"I really like your doorman. But he's a little too personal for casual greetings, don't you think?" I grumbled, directing my manacled knife-wielding wrist towards its sheath. Lugosi unravelled the tentacles pinning me to the wall, and stepped back as if to usher me into the abode.

"Lugosi is a _she_ , and she is rather proficient in her duties." The Kalosian drape was quick to correct me for my improper quote of gender regarding his Malamar.

"Well _it_ ain't got tits, so why the fuck should I care about your squid's sex?" I made sure to plant a high velocity elbow into Lugosi's thorax as I strode past her. I wasn't about to show an ounce of respect for a mon whose first social prerogative was to brain rape a caller.

"That is besides the point, Agent. Lugosi, continue to broadcast interdimensional interference. I don't need our newest Vice-Marshal catching wind of our presence here." Lugosi waddled in after me, crawling on a tsunami of her hydrostat appendages, before occupying a corner near the door. I entered the sweet digs of my host, and discovered that despite the cozy stained wood and polished granite ambience, ACE had valued their operations over the indigenous aesthetics.

Rivers of naked cables and walls of computer displays jury rigged the entire technical interior to a series of massive humming servers. Walking over a tunisian carpet almost killed me, thanks to all the Goddamn ankle-catching wires strewn about. You could barely see the Embassy's finery beneath all of the bleeding-edge clutter. But even so, one archaically carved wooden five cornered dining table sat nestled near the shuttered windows. Two leather upholstered wingback chairs had been arranged around this barren table.

One seat was empty.

The other seat was occupied by a formal brown trench coat, which was worn by a grey templed man.

"Vice-Marshal Looker, Chief Executive of the Watchdogs and ACE's Head of Foreign Operations. Please be seated." The Vice Marshal rose from his chair upon my entry, and didn't reseat himself until I had taken my position at the table.

"...So you're the Nine Lives?" I asked in a dry tone. Vice-Marshal Looker's face darkened.

"...Theron Halcyon is aware of my presence in Vermilion?" Vice-Marshal Looker asked cautiously.

"Looks like it. _Vice-Marshal Halcyon_ wished for me to send the Nine Lives his fondest regards." I answered with a smirk. I was detecting an edge in these deliberations. An edge that had been given to me by the Eidolon King.

-And I had no qualms whatsoever about pressing TH's edge against a Vice-Marshal's throat.

"...This is an unfortunate development, but not entirely surprising." Vice-Marshal Looker sighed.

"-I take it that you two don't exactly get along?" I asked with a grin. Vice-Marshal looker fixed me with a set of ACE Executive hardened eyes.

"House Halcyon has dubbed me the _Nine Lives_ for their nine unsuccessful assassination attempts. You are speaking to the only man that Theron Halcyon has endeavored to murder and failed in doing so. So to answer your question, Agent Bastard: it is rather difficult to maintain a healthy relationship with an individual who has expressed his personal interest in overseeing your private execution within the Distortion." Vice-Marshal Looker informed me.

"What the hell did you do to piss TH off to that extreme?" I was still grinning, and doing my damndest to enforce TH's likeness in my mannerisms.

-And it was getting under Vice-Marshal Looker's skin.

"I assumed a crucial role in orchestrating Sinnoh's last assassination attempt on Theron Halcyon. Truthfully, I was essential to a specific context of the operation. A context that Theron Halcyon found most… disagreeable." Vice-Marshal Looker replied. I raised both of my eyebrows in response to the Vice-Marshal's explanation. Something didn't quite add up.

"...Sinnoh's last assassination attempt? So the entire Sinnoh Parliament bought the farm, but one measly ACE Executive still lives? That seems kind of shady, don't you think? I mean, if TH can singlehandedly wipe out a couple hundred government officials within the security of their home turf, then how hard would it be for TH to kill a single exposed ACE Executive when the Halcyon family already has tabs on that Agent? That sounds really suspicious to me. Almost as if TH wants you alive for something…" Oh, there was an evil twist to either corner of my mouth when I fed Vice-Marshal Looker that last bit.

But the Vice-Marshal had located his cool. We were getting off topic, and our conversation was far from pleasant to his Kalosian palate, so Executive Looker wielded his bureaucratic authority to get us back on point.

"Regardless of his motivations, I still live, so my agenda remains unchanged. Now, we must discuss business, Agent Bastard-"

"-You can call me Warrant Officer or Ranger. I'm not having any of this _Agent_ crap." I growled over a Goddamn ACE Executive, besmirching both his authority and power.

-Why the hell would I risk my life pissing off one of ACE's Vice-Marshal?

Because Theron's edge had left a mark. I had been the one to have brought down that edge on a ACE Executive.

-And I had come out on top.

...So now I was testing waters. I needed to know:

 _-Just how invaluable to Operation: Wounded Hearts did ACE consider me now?_

"While you are covertly operating within the field, _Agent Bastard,_ your agentive title should be denoted by the colloquial _Ranger,_ or _Warrant Officer._ But while you are subject to the security of your superiors, you will be addressed as _Agent._ Do I make myself perfectly clear?" Vice-Marshal Looker was already at patience's end with me, and his dry tone did little to hide it.

"Crystal clear, _Vice-Marshal_ Looker." I ground out between clenched teeth.

 _-Too valuable to outright murder, yet disposable enough to restrain with etiquette regulations and statute limitations._

"Good. While I realize that you were indoctrinated within ACE's agenda without former knowledge or consent, you must realize the gravity of your circumstance. ACE is not the Ranger Corps, Agent Bastard. We adhere to a far less lenient structure of expectations. Do not dissuade yourself from the merit of those expectations, nor should you expect absolvement for failing them." Vice-Marshal Looker laid out the groundworks for me.

"Forgive me for my insignificant Special Operative training regimen, but what limitations should I expect as a lowly Operative in ACE agenda?" I tried to bite back the venom in my voice, but that shit is pretty hard swallow when your service is being forced into a bureau that you would rather have absolutely nothing to do with.

"Our expectations will be familiar to any of Indigo's Special Operatives, albeit with even more fastidiously enforced codes of compliance. Needless to say, Agent Bastard, you will only question directives for principle clarification. Never should your duty be considered a topic for debate. I've read your service record, Agent. The countless pardoned indictments that you acquired within the Ranger Corps would merit charges of insubordination within ACE's prerogative. So consider this your only warning. We do not tolerate any form of non-compliance, and we handle such controversial personnel cases as we handle all forms of liabilities." Vice-Marshal Looker inclined an eyebrow my way, stressing a response from my person for clarification.

"-Termination. Got it." I growled, satisfying the Executive's standards.

"Very good. Now that you're familiar with our policy, we shall move onto the mission status. Theron Halcyon." Vice-Marshal settled back into his wingback chair, and fixed a pair of heavy eyes on me.

"Am I to assume that Vice-Marshal Halcyon is a subject for suspicion?" I asked, loosening my aching jaw.

"An intuition hardly worthy of praise. Correct. Despite his newly acquired station and his expressed agenda, Theron Halcyon is ever the epicenter of dissension. While some of ACE's Executive division considers Theron Halcyon's promotion a form of conciliation, many others amongst my peers view it as a matter of confidence. A confidence that cannot be trusted." Vice-Marshal Looker procured a pair of coffee mugs from an ewer and carafe tray situated beside him, before filling both with the morning brew. Passing a steaming mug my way, the Kalosian Vice-Marshal imbibed his java in long drags.

"Some of us believe that our Director may have acted rashly in his judgement pertaining to Theron Halcyon's contributions to our agency, and given the enormity of our purpose: an individual as influential and as immutable as Theron Halcyon poses a threat to our operations that cannot be understated. As such, operating within the Director's approval and my ordained role as the Chief Executive of the Watchdog Division, I have incorporated your services for Theron Halcyon's continued surveillance." Vice-Marshal Looker drained the last of his mud, before filling his mug with another hearty dose of black gold.

"Is the coffee not to your liking?" Vice-Marshal Looker paused in his administrations of sugar and cream to observe my untouched mug with worry.

-Fucking Kalosians. They're the only people who will discretely threaten your life and subjugate you into their service _before_ expressing concern for your comfort.

"It's fucking delicious. So you were saying something about me being a Watchdog?" I sarcastically replied without sampling my beverage.

"Correct." Vice-Marshal recovered quickly, and proceeded to lay out the track.

"Your primary objective remains unchanged. You will still represent the Ranger Corps within both the eyes of the public and the competition scene of the League. However, your secondary prerogative, of which bears no less significance, is the surveillance of Theron Halcyon's activities as a Vice-Marshal of ACE. I must highlight the prominence of your position. Theron Halcyon has only allowed one other individual this close to his person. You are ACE's best chance at determining Theron Halcyon's motivations, as well as relaying such information to the appropriate offices. Myself, specifically."

"So I'm TH's proctor?" I grumbled, finally taking a lick of my coffee.

-Fucking Kalosians. They just can't make a normal cup of coffee. It has to be so fucking rich and bitter that any who are unaccustomed to such casual intensities end up reduced to sputtering and hacking asthmatics after just one gulp.

"Hardly. If anything, you should consider Theron Halcyon your proctor." Vice-Marshal Looker waited for me to regain my breath before continuing.

-His fucking coffee had more kick to it than rotgut whisky.

"Excuse me?" I wheezed past my snared throat.

"Part of Theron Halcyon's active assignment is both your political and League mentoring. Contrary to his immoral actions, Theron Halcyon is quite savvy in matters pertaining to public appeal. And Theron Halcyon is regarded as one of the world's most powerful League competitors. Even Unova's Fuhrer Adler has expressed an abiding respect for Theron Halcyon's battle prowess, and Holy Matron Cynthia Labelle refuses to answer Sinnoh's vengeful outcry for a benedicted challenge against the Eidolon King. Theron Halcyon wields both power and skill that few can compare, and none have yet willfully contended. And this same Theron Halcyon has accepted you as his League understudy." Vice-Marshal Looker elaborated.

-That explanation shut me up.

"Has there been some misunderstanding?" Vice-Marshal Looker asked.

My face wasn't exactly lit up like a christmas tree, and my dole expression wouldn't have inspired Leonardo Da Vinci with anymore aesthetic drive than a bucket of cold mud. So the Executive's line of questioning was understandable.

"...You want me. To learn. From. Theron. Halcyon… _Right._ Let me go pick up a copy of Lavender Whispers, and then I'll apply for a Channeling. Once I get my first Ghost, it'll be one inhumane act after-"

"-Are you quite finished?" Vice-Marshal Looker interrupted my deadpan rant before I could hit the punchline.

"I'm not exactly keen on being the Oak to TH's Breitbarth. TH's only social interactions seem to revolve around destroying anyone unfortunate enough to be near him. And I haven't got a clue for how I'm supposed to apply his Distortion hyperdynamics to my own particular style of competitive battling. Namely the style I like to call: _Ghost-free._ " I retorted.

"ACE doesn't expect you to wield any revenants. But limiting Theron Halcyon's possible contributions to your League development by simplifying his accolades-"

"-I get it. I'll learn from the dick." I cut my Superior off in a blatant display of anti-Kalosian courtesies. Vice-Marshal Looker, however, seemed unconcerned with my crass dismissal of social protocols.

"I'm aware that this assignment will be an unpleasant experience, but it will ultimately benefit you in your League preparations. Now onto the matter of your Porygon-Two, Alexandria." Vice Marshal Looker pulled a case out from under the table, and procured a glossy new Tact. Pad from its confines.

"This is your new Field Prepped Quantum Analyst Device-"

"-Pokedex is easier to say." I grunted. A slight smile lifted the corner of Vice-Marshal Looker's weary mouth.

"Very well. This is your new ACE issued Pokedex. Version one-point-eight. It is virtually identical to your current issue, though several components have been altered for increased Distortion scream resistance. On the subject of quantum discrepancies perpetrated by exposure to-"

"-Tell me what it does, not how it works." I cut off Vice-Marshal Looker again, but this crude interruption was not met by idle amusement. One very pissed off ACE Executive was glaring cold murder at my person, and I was suddenly overcome with a morbid curiosity regarding quantum computations and their pre-programmed security contingencies.

"...As I was saying, your current model lacks the sophistication required for surviving prolonged exposure to interdimensional emissions. ACE assigned Central's entire AI technical division to the resolution of corrupted quantum computations performed during spatial-mass fluctuations. One of our Quantum Programmers was able to realize an ingenious sequence that will permit for active computations and even transmissions within the radiant parameters of an active Distortion rift. Though rather limited in its data transferal, the upgraded variant of Alexandria will be able to function during mass exposure to Distortion anomalies. By flash-burn replication of his own quantum matrix within cyberspace, Alexandria will sporadically generate an infinite influx of clones, each bearing a dissimilar and singular simplistic function-"

Vice-Marshal Looker droned on and on about the fancy black box and its soon to be ever more irrepressible Porygon-Two, while I tried not to nod off during his techno babble lecture. When the ACE Executive was finally finished regaling me with my newest anti-privacy apparel, Vice-Marshal Looker requested my old Tact. Pad for AI transference, and proceeded to to introduce Alexandria into his new home.

"That sums up our agenda in regards to your Watchdog status. Now onto an article that pertains to your primary objective within Operation: Wounded Hearts." Vice-Marshal Looker handed me my new Pokedex, and lifted another item out from underneath the table, before popping the clasps on a familiar looking aluminum briefcase. Pivoting the black foam interior my way, I stood face to face with a pink and white multi-paged dispatch, and a silver crowned bulky Pokeball, replete with a tiara of six blue gems.

"The current members of your League Team will be returned to you in intervals pertaining to their recovery. I am told that your Growlithe, though currently unfit for competition, will be sent to Vermilion's Military kennels via Aviation later this evening. You are permitted to reclaim your Hunter-Killer at any time favoring your discretion. The Ivysaur is expected to be returned to you in similar condition two days past tomorrow, alongside the Magikarp, who is also medically unfit for duty. While the Onix… was only recently restrained by the Blackhats so that the medical personnel could properly administer to his fractured carapace. Forbearing any further violent outbursts, Damascus will be reunited with you within the week. Which brings us to the fifth member of your competitive team." Vice-Marshal Looker removed the dispatch from the briefcase, and handed the material to me.

"ACE's relationship with Chimera Industries has culminated in your inclusion with one of Enzo Davinci's personal projects. Project Atlas, as Enzo has dubbed it." Vice-Marshal Looker began. I was perusing the thicker than normal dispatch, when my lone eye locked onto the denoted species of GI mon.

"You've got to be shitting me…" My voice had gone hoarse.

"That was our first reaction when Enzo Davinci announced a margin of success in Project Atlas." Vice-Marshal Looker confided.

"-I thought that they were supposed to be impossible to domesticate!" I roared, slamming the dispatch on the table. If he was shocked at my passionate outcry, Vice-Marshal Looker didn't let on about it with anything more than an extended pause.

"...According to Enzo Davinci, impossible is just a challenge that no one else has been able to overcome." Vice-Marshal Looker calmly replied.

"...I'm gonna kill it. The first thing that I'm gonna do when it-"

"Project Atlas represents almost forty years of publicly funded research and development for the domestication of this particular species. Before Enzo, there was Professor Oak. Before Professor Oak, there was Doctor Fuji. Enzo's predecessors failed. Enzo however, has successfully managed to repress the instincts that drive this species, without adversely affecting its metabolism-"

"-What a fucking lunatic! That's the first thing that needs to be repressed! I damn near got eaten by one of these things! And if this fucked up monster came out of Waterloo-!"

"-Project Atlas was undertaken by Waterloo specifically for warmon applications. You don't honestly believe that ACE or Chimera are so reckless that we'd entrust the private sector with the first batch of domesticated Munchlaxes, do you?" Vice-Marshal Looker shut me down mid freak out.

"You're the only League Certified Trainer to have possession of a registered Munchlax. A Munchlax that underwent the same genetic refinery that its Military siblings did. There was a grand total of twenty-three Munchlaxes projected for beta testing. Only eighteen survived germination. Another two expired from birth complications. And another four died during the following neurological operations. Leaving only twelve. You have been entrusted with number six of the original twenty-three. The other eleven are currently undergoing Waterloo's combat preparation training. ACE rushed number six out of Military service and transferred its dispatch to the Ranger Corps. You will need to first complete your new unit's basic training, before moving on to the more advanced combat curriculum-"

"-It's never gonna live that long. It'll come out of that Heavy Ball just once, and then I'm gonna leave whatever is left of it for the worms." I hissed, hand clasping Doug's knife in a white knuckled grip.

"Project Atlas represents a financial investment beyond your scope of reckoning, Agent Bastard. We of ACE _expect_ you to recognize this asset's net value, and to exercise the strictest level of precautions when handling your newest squad member. If the dispatch hasn't specified the details, Number Six is still an early juvenile, so it is quite delicate." Vice-Marshal Looker was giving me another one of ACE's warnings. But I was taking a stroll down old Memory Lane, and just coming up on the intersection of Hell Drive and Irony Road.

"...Five of my Squadmates were murdered by one of these _things._ Five of my friends. Five people who looked to me to keep them safe. Five Rangers that I failed." I could feel the hot tears in my eyes.

-This wasn't fair. This wasn't right.

My mother had been dead for sixth months, and the agencies responsible for promptly informing me had only made the information known last night at swordpoint.

I had just been made into an ACE Agent against my will, and told to either comply with ACE's directives, or risk certain peril.

I was stuck following a malevolent prick around, who could kill me or anyone around me at anytime for any reason without any consequence, and this same twisted and demented sadist was dropping heavy hints at my status as a political pawn.

-And now _this_. A living sin being thrust into my balled fists. A breathing monument to my greatest failure being forced into my care. The spawn of a monster that I hated with an unrivaled and abject loathing was now being shoved down my throat, alongside a naked threat intended to dissuade me from violating ACE's confidence.

Fuck ACE. Fuck the Rangers. Fuck Operation: Wounded Hearts.

-Fuck the fucking world.

I was gonna kill this piece of shit, even if it meant my own death.

I was gonna maim and slaughter the monster that had maimed and slaughtered my Echo.

I was gonna torture this progeny of the fiends who had tortured me.

 _-Vengeance_.

It was all that I cared about.

It was my only escape.

It was the only recourse I would even consider.

- _Death to all of Snorlaxkind. Death to every one of them._

"You will take this Heavy Ball, Agent. And you will swear to cherish its occupant like that of your own child... Or you will not leave this room alive. Last chance." Vice-Marshal Looker had finally cast aside his Kalosian courtesies, and revealed the cold-blooded and inhumane ACE Executive disguised beneath the cordial exterior.

"...Fine." I spat, grabbing the Heavy Ball and adding it to my empty belt with a twitching hand. Every livid centimeter of me was shaking in rage.

I'd leave this room with the Heavy Ball alive.

-But Vice-Marshal Looker could carry through on his death threat after I had finished avenging my fallen Echo.

"Chimera has committed every asset of their polysynaptic brown adipose tissue development to this particular batch of Munchlax. Like every warmon produced by Waterloo, the subject in question possess artificial genetic augmentations that distinguish it from its natural counterparts. Enzo Davinci himself has openly acknowledged that this restricted distribution serves primarily as a test bed. We are unsure as to what manner of behavioral or physiological complications may arise during Project Atlas's promotional stage, but Waterloo has provided all of their Munchlax recipients with a manual documenting the possible altercations. And in your case specifically, Waterloo has taken an even greater step to ensure the highest achievable success rate for their public prototype unit." Vice-Marshal Looker continued, oblivious to the fact that I was beyond giving a fuck.

"Numerous commercial organizations situated in Kanto's every urban locale have been sufficiently fortified with your Munchlax's dietary necessities. A list of such commercial organizations has been provided with your unit's dispatch. You are to meet with a Waterloo representative in Vermilion's Washington Precinct Pokemart at nineteen-hundred hours today, and to receive formal training on specific care provider techniques that will be required-"

"-Just how young is this thing?!" I spat, flicking saliva across the table with my vocal outburst. Vice-Marshal Looker met my deadly glare with his no-bullshit-tolerated gaze.

"Waterloo recorded Number Six's date of birth seven months ago. Since that date, your unit has undergone extensive surgical alterations to its cerebrum, as well as Chimera's growth enhancement therapy. With sustained release from its Heavy Ball and regular access to its required nutriment, Number Six's evolution cycle is projected to begin within a month." Vice-Marshal Looker overloaded me with the unnecessary details.

I didn't need to know anything about Waterloo's inaccurate evolution epoch estimations.

-A corpse's only "evolution" is decomposition. Everything else is irrelevant.

"Now onto the final matter. Your relationship with Vice-Marshal Halcyon." Vice-Marshal Looker began. I was glaring cold blooded loathing at his person, while still wrestling with the rage of our former exchange.

"What relationship?" I growled. Vice-Marshal Looker caught the hint.

-I'd be happier if TH was fucking dead too.

"I am aware that your first encounter was devoid of pleasantries, and every following exchange has built upon that template, but Theron Halcyon displays an almost uncanny ability to reverse individual opinions regarding his person. Every word spoken by Theron Halcyon should be regarded with suspicion of motivation. _Every single word._ His revenants can detect and relay to him every crack in an individual's disposition, and Theron Halcyon is not above manipulating those inherent faults to his advantage. Do not trust him, or any discussed material pertaining to his past. _Theron Halcyon does not possess a conscience_. Every action he takes in contradiction of the former statement is a ruse deployed to garner favor. Know what you are dealing with, Agent Bastard. Theron Halcyon is not human. He has far more in common with his soulless wraiths than he has with you or I." Vice-Marshal Looker had assumed his most deadly of serious voices for this address. I didn't doubt a word that came out of Executive Looker's mouth, but I was still applying his TH suspicion formula to my present Vice-Marshal's own motivations.

-Why was Vice-Marshal Looker so worried? Was he afraid that TH would stab ACE in the back again, and that I'd team up with him to do it?

Fuck that. I wanted nothing to do with either one of them. And if such an event was to eventually come to pass?

-Then this lowly pawn of a Ranger was gonna make himself scarce, and let the two of them duke it out for their political game board.

"I'm well ahead of you on that one, Vice-Marshal. Now before I return to my duties, is there anything else we need to discuss?" Oh, listen to me. Calmly stating commitment to duty while entertaining plans for a G.I. Munchlax's unauthorized evisceration. I probably sounded pretty suspicious myself.

"My closing recommendation pertains to your new Tact. Pad. I have uploaded all of ACE's relevant material regarding Theron Halcyon. I suggest that you outfit yourself with my personal armory of information. That way, you can at least meet the Eidolon King on a level turf. Good day to you, Agent Bastard." Vice-Marshal Looker rose from his chair, and inclined his head towards my person in a polite nod.

"Can't wish you the same, Vice-Marshal. Don't start humping your squid until I'm on the elevator. I don't want to hear the squelching on my way out." I grunted, shoving my Tact. Pad and the Munchlax's dispatch into the front pockets of my coat.

"You people of Kanto…" I heard Vice-Marshal Looker mutter in exasperation, as I hoofed it past the stationary Lugosi, and shoulder my way through the suite's exit.

After a silent repetition of my prior trip through the Embassy, I marched straight out the front doors…

...And stepped right into the grey light of Thanatos's Ghostfire.

The Chandelure's haunting came creeping back upon me, but that corporeal lamp wasn't focusing his attentions on my person.

Those burning seraphim eyes of his were aimed up at a shuttered window on the sixth floor of the Kalosian Embassy, while the Ghost above me lightly sputtered with a hiss of flames.

"Is Looker watching us?" I growled to my least favorite revenant. Thanatos turned away from the window, and fixed his damned angelic visage upon me with a soft clattering of his glass beads.

"...So whose side are we on, Thanatos?" I quietly asked of the possessed stained glass and precious metal lantern.

Thanatos's light dimmed, and the hovering wraith moved to take point ahead of me, indicating that I was to follow him back to his liege with a slow whirl of his antique frame.

"-Why did I even ask you?" I spat after the soulburner, as my marching boots dodged the writhing shadows that Vermilion City cast in the light of Thanatos's Ghostfire.

…

A coffee shop.

TH was just another stereotypical Kalosian.

Imbibing his espresso macchiato in neat sips, while sampling his semolina brioche with an odd compliment of Relicanth caviar, calamata olives, and barhi dates.

The fucking Chandelure seemed right at home above such a repast, as Thanatos and I entered the almost empty Cafe.

"I brought your lamp back." I grumbled, praying that TH would finally call off his wraith.

-No such luck.

"Ah, Zane! What is your preferred cup? No, no! Let me guess... Serveuse! One caffe affogato!" TH was actually smiling. Well, he was always smiling, but this was a different kind of smile. A weird kind of smile for TH to be wearing...

-I should specify: TH was actually smiling in a way that didn't insinuate a sick pleasure at someone else's discomfort.

"Of all the places to find a genuine barista cafe in Kanto, I would never have expected Vermilion City! What a refreshing taste of home!" TH was completely out of character, which was throwing me for an absolute loop.

"Your caffe affogato, Lord Halcyon." Yet another distinct Kalosian accent presented itself to me in the voice of our waitress. She was a young thing, likely Kanto born, and uneasy as all hell to be serving the haunted figure in dark shades.

-But the way she said "Lord Halcyon" implied that her apprehension wasn't brought about by TH's Distortion seep.

"Merci bien, Mademoiselle Anne." TH swept off his black cadet hat, and inclined his head in a gentlemanly bow.

"J'étais heureux de le faire, Roi Fantôme!" The waitress was beside herself with nervous giggles. You could tell that TH's Distortion seep was affecting her, but the cute little blonde was far more taken with the man responsible for her unnatural discomfort. Even so, she still made herself scarce rather quickly.

"So are you gonna tap that Kalosian ass, or can I give it a shot?" My own voice didn't sound quite right. Despite my lewd commentary, shock had deprived me of my aloof disposition.

"I would commend the endeavor if you were to abstain from defiling any more virgins with your uninhibited carnal desires, Zane. Particularly Anne." TH never missed a cordial beat, as he slid the caffe affogato across the table and towards me. Nothing I could say was going to rain on his parade. TH seemed genuinely happy to have found an individual from his own nation.

"I do hope that the Nine Lives didn't trouble you overly much. He can be rather… circuitous at times." And there was the smirk that I loathed and feared.

"...So he tried to kill you?" I asked in an undertone. TH just chuckled.

"His failure to do so hardly grants Vice-Marshal Looker's case any distinctinction. Assassination attempts were a daily occurrence in my life not so long ago. No…" TH settled back into his seat with a snide curl twisting his cruel smirk.

"It was the means that Vice-Marshal Looker employed which sickened me to no end. After his desperate maneuver failed, I reversed my expressed passivity in such matters and assumed… a far more aggressive position when dealing with political assassinations." TH grew quieter as he continued, but that nasty smile never diminished for an instant.

"- _Sinnoh_." I whispered. TH shrugged with a chuckle.

"Executing a single ACE Executive, or the individuals engaged by the other agencies involved, would not have conveyed a sufficient message. The fate of Sinnoh's Theocratic Parliament served as a warning to any other organizations that would dare stoop as low as Sinnoh had…" TH stated matter-of-factly.

"And you let one of the key members of that assassination attempt live?" I choked. I hadn't touched my beverage yet. I couldn't believe that I was discussing a massacre with the ghastly event's perpetrator.

-I couldn't believe that TH considered this casual conversation.

"I've shown mercy in the past. Not often, and never without some form of enforced consequence, but I need not murder every individual that wishes me ill." TH returned to his meal with a relaxed air, while I stared at him in disbelief.

"...Looker seemed to believe that you had it in for him. Something about a personal vendetta? Like him getting beheaded in the Distortion kind of vendetta?" I pressed on when my voice had returned. TH chortled through his olives.

"Did he seem… rather haggard?" TH asked slyly. I swallowed.

"As I have stated before: My mercy is not without consequence. Let the good Vice-Marshal Looker waste away in dread of my retribution. Lord willing, should the two of us ever meet in person… Well… He won't be known as the _Ten Lives_ after that fateful encounter." TH finished his espresso, and moved on to a kettle of tea.

"You should finish that caffe affogato before the cream melts, Zane." TH indicated my untouched cup with a lackadaisical gesture.

-Yeah. Sure. First just let me figure out how to breath again…

"I understand that you have a very busy schedule today, what with your newest teammate and all, so I shan't keep you Zane. Thanatos, I thank you for your service. You may return to me now." TH idly commanded of his soulburner, finally freeing me from Thanatos's haunting.

Thanatos crackled away into the Distortion, leaving my sweat glazed hide crawling from the unnatural sound. TH rose from his seat, after laying down a King's tip for Anne upon the table, and then left the cafe without speaking another word.

Leaving me completely flabbergasted when TH's Distortion seep had faded away with him.

 _-What the hell was that all about?!_

"Are you an associate of Lord Halcyon's?"

I jumped out my skin when that timid voice sounded above my shoulder. Poor Anne spilled coffee all over the floor when my hand connected with my knife hilt.

"-I'm sorry! I-"

Yeah, Anne and I were apologizing to each other at the same time. Normally I'd use this seemingly awkward moment to my advantage, but I wasn't feeling all that horny right now.

"Let me help you with that." I left my seat, and made to assist Anne with the cleanup, but the spry lass mopped up the spill in three deft strokes.

"There's no need. I'm ah, I'm sorry for-" Anne was looking for an escape, but my curiosity regarding recent events was compelling me to detain her.

"-You asked if I was one of TH's associates?" I baited my hook with the obvious lure.

-Bingo.

"...You were accompanied by _Perdition's Glow_ when you arrived, were you not?" Anne paused in her retreat to sate her own curiosity.

" _Perdition's Glow_? You mean _Thanatos_? Yeah, TH temporarily assigned his soulburner to me as my… escort." I fought off the chills. Not having that Ghost plaguing my shadow was a boon still fresh to my shaken demeanor.

"Escort? Why would Lord Halcyon assign one of his holy revenants to a Kantonese Ranger as an escort?" Anne was looking at me skeptically. I just shrugged.

"I dunno. TH and I just met. Hell, I didn't even know he was a noble Lord until-"

-I was interrupted by an explosion of laughter from Anne.

"You didn't know?! Quel imbécile! He is Lord Theron Halcyon, Le Roi Fantôme! The rightful King of Kalos! Not this _Tee-Atch,_ vous philistin!" Anne damn near spat at my feet with her last line.

-Yup. Definitely Kanto born. Anne would never have made it to adolescence with a head firmly connected to her neck had she been raised in Kalos with a temper like that.

"Damn girl. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?" I tried to give Anne my one-million Sandz smile, but there must have been something in my teeth, 'cause Anne wasn't having any of it.

"Casse-toi, salope!"

-Okay. Now the girl's spit was running down my left eyebrow.

"Keep that shit up, and you're really gonna turn me on." Enter one big ol' nasty Ranger grin for a particularly scandalized Kalosian harlot.

After that line had turned her face red, Anne pretty much chased me out of the Cafe with one of the most colorful strings of french profanity that I would have never expected to hear in Kanto.

I would have been chuckling about my most recent of pick-up failures, but there were way too many dark thoughts haunting my mind to permit such flights of self-depreciative humor. Moments after having being driven to the streets of Vermilion City, my visage set into a concrete expression of cold intentions as I wiped Anne's spit from my face. Taking one good long glare at the new Heavy Ball on my belt, my jaw worked itself till my teeth had been ground into dust, while the rational part of my brain tussled with a dangerous passion.

Finally breaking off my hateful glare, I stepped off on my right foot, and marched north towards Vermilion City's gates.

I had made my decision.

ACE could do whatever the fuck they wanted to do to me.

-But I wasn't their pawn, and I sure as hell wasn't gonna put up with this twisted shit.

...There was no way in hell that I was gonna nurture the beast that had killed my Echo…

…

The Gouge. This massive fault splits central Kanto in half like a buttcrack, starting from northern Cerulean and stretching all the way mid-south to Vermilion City. Saffron City is nestled on a highrise of the fault's floor, affording that sprawling metropolis with a far more hospitable climate than the land smothered in the oblique fault walls' shadow.

Kanto's Gouge serves as just another startling reminder of how crazy ol' Regigigas just about tore the world in half during the late Terra-Divide.

You can't move a continent across half the equatorial breadth of the globe in a week's worth of time without leaving an impression. There's a reason for why Regigigas is regarded as the most infamous of the Lima-Threes.

Regigigas could have destroyed the entire world when he merged the South American landmass with the Asian continent's east coast. That event should have killed everything on the surface of the earth.

-But miraculously?

Earth didn't vent its newly exposed mantle into the atmosphere, and life on this planet was permitted to persist.

At least, we assumed that such an event would expose a massive portion of the Asthenosphere, which would first evaporate the oceans, and then the following global anomalies brought about by both the lack of the ocean and the colossal burning wound in the Earth's surface would have rendered this planet incapable of supporting life, but good ol' Regigigas…

...He didn't need to go as deep as the Asthenosphere. Regigigas basically just shook the granite continental layer of South America free from the basalt layer of the oceanic crust…

...And then Regigigas proceeded to push the world's biggest rock across the pacific ocean's abyssal plain.

Life on this planet was spared courtesy of a Lima-Three's cost-cutter. It would've taken too much of an effort for Regigigas to fuck Earth the right way by digging all the way down to Asthenosphere.

That said…

...Even Regigigas's cost-cutter still fucked us up good.

You can't move an article with that much mass across a planet's surface without incurring some pretty violent repercussions. The seafloor between South America's original point of origin and its current location is marred with both mantle breaching scars and continental debris. So most of the original South American landmass is scattered across the pacific ocean's abyssal plain. And as for the South American continent's point of origin…

Well, we're fourteen-thousand years past the Terra Divide, and ships still won't cross that area of the pacific ocean. Despite Regigigas's half-hearted attempt at killing the planet, he still managed to open up some pretty deep rents in the Earth's crust. There is exposed mantle in South America's point of origin, just not enough to bring about a Hadean cataclysm that would end life on this world…

...But still enough to fill a continental expanse with toxic gases and a nearly boiling sea.

None of mankind's seafaring vessel have thus far been designed with a hull that can resist temperature expansion to that degree, and an atmosphere constituting of high concentrations of sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide is anything but breathable.

-We're just grateful that only one contained area of the Earth was so adversely affected by the Terra Divide. Contemporary humanity believed that Regigigas could've similarly fucked up the entire planet.

And the crazy repercussions of the Terra-Divide still scar the world to this day.

The massive continental crack known in Kanto as "The Gouge?"

-That's just where the South American Landmass buckled halfway into its relocation.

And the Gouge is one weird environment, let me tell you.

The Gouge itself spans damn near a thousand-kilometers from fault wall to fault wall, and everything between those walls are subject to entangled climates, due to the sheer depth of the fault floor and the incredible altitude of the fault walls.

The entire Gouge acts as a "Storm Canal," where the warmer northern tropical storms of Cerulean funnel down and meet the cooler southern tropical storms of Vermilion.

-But if you think that these two different tropical storms make it universally wet in the Gouge, you'd better think again.

The core of the Gouge is an elevated plateaux, which may be lower than the fault walls, but it's still higher than the heavy clouds that bring tropical weather across Central Kanto by means of the "Storm Canal."

And this plateaux has enough altitude to defy the stretching shadows of the fault walls, meaning that the baking heat of the sun pounds the plateau's surface every hour of every day.

The end result is a wet trench that is too cold to qualify as tropical, and a plateau rising from its center that matches the definition of an "arid desert."

Swamps and Badlands nestled side by side in queer harmony.

-That's the Gouge.

Depending on your elevation, you'll either be standing in woodlands, bog, slough, or desert. And all of this diverse terrain can be experienced in a geologically insignificant four-hundred kilometer range.

And just like every other compacted diversity of environments, the Gouge's indigenous mon roster defies comparison.

-We haven't even documented every species of mon occupying the Gouge. Just about any species of mon can locate a habitat that suits their inherent preferences within this one tectonic fault.

And the sheer expanse of locales means that the dwindling Ranger Corps _cannot_ monitor the entirety of the Gouge. We have one Outpost south of Cerulean, two Bastions situated in Saffron, and one Outpost north of Vermilion.

Everything in between the Frontier Outposts and the City Bastions is no man's land. One-million-nine-hundred-and eighty-seven-thousand square kilometers of uncharted hostile territory. The Frontier of all Frontiers. Potentially the most dangerous location on Earth for humanity.

-The Gouge.

 _...I just can't think of a better place for killing a Munchlax._

…

I had left Vermilion City's northern gate far behind me. Taking the Frontier trail north towards Saffron, I sought a location free of other eyes. Trainers were still commonplace, but my Tact. Pad had me listed as "Unincorporated," so the Trainer's Eyes didn't register me as a Trainer with a competitive mon roster.

Which looked pretty suspicious, seeing as no Ranger worth his blood would dare enter the Gouge undefended. Fortunately, there wasn't only Trainers on the north road. An interesting spectacle was up for review, as a detachment of Skinheads and Greenbacks alike were marshaled together in order to operate the southern Gouge's patrols.

The Skinheads were receiving their Frontier training from the Ranger Corps' Commanders, and the Rangers were substituting their personnel shortages with the Military's junior regiments. It was one of the unusual features of Vermilion. The Military Governors actually gave a pair of council seats to the Ranger Corps, and afforded the local Ranger Corps with all the respect due an allied military division. Contrary to everything that the Infantry of both separate marshal divisions propagate, the Greenbacks and the Skinheads are pretty tight as allies. Sure, the Skinheads love to brag about their guns and bombs, and the Greenbacks love to remind the Skinheads that there's no such thing as action in the Military, but our two Governmental ordained militias can see eye to eye on one article:

-The necessity of violence.

Yep, I may view the Ranger Corps as the superior fighting force when compared to the Military, but it doesn't mean that I'd turn down a Skinhead's assist in a firefight.

-And if you could somehow keep a Skinhead and me from discussing the dissimilar effectiveness of our two separate marshal divisions, we'd probably get along swimmingly.

But the Bucket Hats are the Bucket Hats, and the Berets are the Berets, and ne'er should the two convene.

So it is written, and so say we all:

 _-Praise be the Corps, and fuck the fucking Military._

I was getting some looks from the Ranger divisions of the patrols, but not one unit dared break formation to address me. You could tell that some of the Greenbacks were positively itching to point me out to their Commanders.

The Fucking Bastard was in Vermilion. Which could only mean one thing:

-Lieutenant Surge was next on the Fucking Bastard's "Gym Leaders that needed to be fucked-up list."

That contest was guaranteed to generate some interesting conflicts between the Skinheads and the Greenbacks, let me tell you. But fortunately, my presence in Vermilion was currently known only by a few active duty Rangers. It would take about a day for the rest of Kanto to figure out my present location.

Giving me one day of solitude to avenge my fallen Echo.

Moving deeper into the Gouge, I came at last to the final checkpoint. Vermilion Prime Outpost was dead ahead, and beyond that, stretched untouched kilometers of the Gouge's Frontier privacy.

But I wasn't using the Ranger's established checkpoints to cross the border of humanity's land and the mon's turf. I didn't want to deal with the Corps or their Frontier access procedures right now.

So I scaled the Route walls, and crossed the Hades's Swath, before plunging into the Gouge's overgrowth as good as naked.

No Cortez. No Vauban. No Damascus. Not even Darwin.

Just my standard kit, my beret and BDU, a pair of knives, and one cold blooded intention.

Clasped to the mag-lock on my belt. Sponging up a charge for its microcomputers from the BIOS interface locking it to my hip.

A Munchlax's Heavy Ball.

-Both the past purveyor and future recipient of every foul memory and horrible emotion that currently threatened to tear me apart.

I was walking with them again.

They were right behind me when we crossed into the Frontier as a single unit.

Carlos at my back.

Brenda right behind him.

Erin and Pete on either side of her.

Amber on the rear.

We were heading for Frontier Charlie.

They were scared as all hell.

Yet they marched on, every hope they bore for survival was pinned upon my shoulders.

...And even though I now knew what was going to happen to us…

...I still couldn't stop marching…

The dream wouldn't let me undo what had already been done before.

…

I stood in that clearing for what felt like an age.

Staring at the Heavy Ball in my hand.

They were still with me.

My Echo.

Everyone of them had taken their positions around me.

I could hear them all speaking to me again. Snippets of the conversations that I'd held with them back when they were alive…

Our unit had died.

Every one of us had been murdered.

Yet one of Echo still carried on.

Broken. Defeated. Wounded. Shattered.

... _Lost_.

I was the spirit of vengeance. I was the embodiment of Echo's loss.

One crippled Ranger.

One angry, hurt, and frightened soldier.

But I wasn't alone. My Echo was here.

-And they were going to help me right this one wrong.

I didn't say a word as I drew Doug's knife from its sheath. I never gave a command as I released the trigger on the Heavy Ball.

The Pokeball's beam hadn't even begun to condense when I dropped the Heavy Ball, and drew my second BAMF.

The Crossed Arms on my breast clinked when that crude knife's hilt brushed up against the medallion's pin.

I didn't deserve that decorum.

I had failed my Echo. They had died, and I had lived.

The Crossed Arms wasn't awarded to survivors.

The honor hanging from my coat was awarded to martyrs.

Today…

...Today I was gonna earn my medal.

Today, I was gonna be the martyr.

Today…

...I was gonna see my Echo again.

The beam began to materialize after a painful five second delay. Both of my knives fell into position, as I assumed a rigid stance.

I could see them dying again.

Carlos crushed underfoot.

Pete ripped in half.

Amber's disoriented eyes looking up past the gun barrel held between my hands.

Erin and Brenda screaming, right before they both disappeared…

And me…

Firing every remaining round in my gun into the fat fuck's dome. Screaming obscenities through the unheeded river of tears as I tossed aside the empty gun and drew my knife.

Charging straight for the Snorlax without any thought for my own self preservation.

The roar that shook the earth when my knife sank into the fatty belly.

The cruising paws that took me by my shoulders and hefted me into the air like a pebble.

The smell of its rancid breath as that gory mouth opened, and the hot wind that deafened me with yet another roar.

The teeth that punctured every inch of my body, and the jaws that had broken every bone in my chest and legs.

I was there again.

I was right there.

And that Snorlax…

...Had only just begun to take a form free of his Heavy Ball.

Standing three meters tall from his splayed toes to the tiny triangular auricles of his ears. Three meters wide at the gut, shrinking by half a meter above and below that at the most. Thick and heavy forearms dangling from the soft and narrow biceps. A powerful pectoral thorax stationed right above the swollen fatty abdomen. A bluish-black coat of coarse hairs running down the muscular back. A downy cream colored fur stretching from the stubby tail and up to the elongated chin. Two yellow tusks jutting out from the canine roots of the lower jaw.

A Caniforms's black button nose and snouted lips merging with a Homininae's bulky rostral ridge.

It almost looked like an obese hybrid of the old Earth's now extinct Ursidae Family and Gorillini Tribe.

-A Munchlax. The miniature version of a Snorlax.

For just one moment, I locked up.

It was real.

It was standing right there.

My tormentor.

The horror and anger flared throughout my being until all I could see was red, and all I could hear was a dull ring. Every dead nerve in my scars lit up with a wet heat, as the memories rekindled that bodily agony again.

My Echo, dead.

My body, ruined.

My mind, haunted.

My future, damned.

And this monster…

...This _thing…_

...Was responsible for it all.

I took one step towards the Munchlax, knives raised for the kill…

...And the quivering Munchlax fell onto its side with a yelp.

I locked up again.

-I hadn't even touched it, and the Munchlax had just tumbled over…

...As if it couldn't stand on its own four feet.

As if it were wounded...

As if it were completely helpless…

...It was a baby. It still had its milk teeth. The mammalian infant's eyes hadn't even opened yet.

The Munchlax was making a piteous racket on the Frontier loam, rolling and flopping this way and that, as though it was searching for something.

I couldn't move.

I was expecting a monster…

...Not a child looking for its mother.

I clenched my teeth and hefted my blades as I stepped forward again.

Then I saw the scars, weaving a sinister pattern around the Munchlax's posterior cranium.

I knew what those fine red contours and evenly distanced tracks denoted. I had marks just like those scrawled all across my own body.

 _-Surgical scars._

...What the hell had Waterloo done to this thing?

 _-Why the fuck did I even care?_

Gritting my teeth, I sheathed my standard BAMF, and grabbed a hold of the prone Munchlax's left ear with my spare hand.

I didn't need to fight this beast.

This Munchlax was practically helpless.

-All I had to do was execute it.

Doug's razored edge found the Munchlax's throat, and my face twisted with the rage when my hands refused to carry out my will.

-No.

...I couldn't do it like this.

-The Snorlax didn't show me any merciful quick death.

...Why the hell should I spare its child of the same agony?

Should I gut the Munchlax alive?

Stab it to death?

Beat it to a fatty pulp, and then hack the bruised remains into bits?

...Or just open the abdominal cavity, and then abandon the infant Munchlax in the hostile Frontier to bleed out?

I couldn't make my mind up.

...I don't know why I couldn't just do it.

 _-Why was I trying to stop myself?_

One look into the Munchlax's sealed eyes filled me with a cold hollow that hinted at something's absence.

I was trying to stop myself, because he was dead.

...Because the Fucking Bastard was dead, just like his Echo.

Meaning that it was only me in that clearing.

...And Zane just couldn't bring himself to murder a helpless child.

"Do it, you piece of shit…" I spat at myself.

Doug's red blade pressed back up against the Munchlax's throat. The little fucker swatted at me when the edge drew blood.

It was what I needed. I needed an excuse…

Just show me that you're a monster.

Prove to me that you aren't a motherless child.

"Come on, you fucker!" I grabbed the Munchlax by the lower jaw, and lifted his chin away from his jugular. Infant or not, the Munchlax was still a monster.

And Rangers killed monsters. No matter what their age was.

Doug's knife lifted above my head, as I angled the blade for one clean and heavy stroke.

" _NO! DON'T!"_ I tensed up when the dream brought her voice back to me.

... _Brenda…_

" _You don't understand! They're still alive! They're only babies!"_

-The Nido pyre.

" _Don't kill them, Zane! Please… Please don't hurt them!"_

I could see their horrified faces again. I could see the terror and pity in everyone of my Echo's eyes. They didn't want to see any children burned to death by my hands. My Echo didn't want to be the monsters that murdered infants after their birth.

 _You have to look, Zane. This is your duty. You have to watch…_

 _You've seen this before. You know that you're prepared for it…_

 _You can't run anymore, Zane…_

My own words… The very same words that I had spoken to Brenda, while a litter of Nido pups were immolated under my orders…

...Those same words…

...Came back to haunt me.

...So I looked at the ghosts of my Echo. I fulfilled my duty to those fallen Rangers. I watched as all the grief that I had inflicted upon them broke everyone of those kind souls...

I had seen this before. I knew that I wasn't prepared for it.

...And I couldn't accept vengeance as my only escape…

Doug's knife fell from my limp hand. I hit the ground rump first, feeling more uneasy than I had ever felt before.

-Was I a coward?

...Or was this just empathy?

The Munchlax's massive head pivoted on a scent. Those sightless, closed eyes fell onto me. That black button nose sniffed desperately at the air.

And with a frightened groan, the Munchlax placed its huge head into my lap, and curled its massive body around me.

I couldn't do anything. Breathing escaped me. I couldn't kill this Munchlax…

...But I sure as hell didn't want it touching me.

A panicking Ranger took a hold of the castoff Heavy Ball, and a compromised Zane made the hideous abomination disappear in a flash of red light.

I was hyperventilating when I stared at the Heavy Ball in my hands.

I felt sick. I felt terrified.

The dream began to fade, and all of Echo's voices drifted off into the distance…

And I was alone.

Yet again, I was all alone.

…

"Cortez."

My dog looked up at me from the kennel. He knew something was wrong. Maybe it was the hollow voice. Maybe it was the vacant stare. Maybe it was the slump that crushed my invincible disguise.

I didn't even try to hide it. I didn't even look like the Fucking Bastard anymore.

Haggard. Beaten. Limping on his crippled frame. Not one of my present concerns warranted an illusion worth entertaining.

I couldn't even look my scarred up dog in the eye.

The kennel master opened the gate, and a gimpy Growlithe staggered out into my arms.

We were in full view of the Military's Reconnaissance division.

A disabled Ranger, and his wounded Hunter-Killer.

A Martial Trainer, and his GI Growlithe.

A boy, and his dog.

Cortez knew that I needed him. It must just be animal thing.

It must just be a family thing…

...But no judgemental audience was gonna stop me from holding my dog.

"Alright… Alright…" I swallowed the choke in my throat, and wrestled a shuddering breath into my lungs. I lifted myself back up into the dignified posture expected of my person. Cortez, ever the soldier, followed his CO's suit and took his disciplined position at my side. Most of the Skinheads were still eying us something funny when Cortez and I marched out of the Kennel yard. I didn't pay a single quirked brow or stink eye any heed.

Fuck all of you.

You can't even dream of having a family as tight as mine…

Cortez and I exited the Military compound and came out onto the public streets, before we made our way south down Vermilion main.

"Did the medics treat you well in Cerulean?" I asked my dog in a guarded voice.

Cortez sneezed at me.

"I'll take that as a no." I chuckled, grateful to have my silent second in command back at my side.

"Cortez, I need to fill you in on some details. We got a couple of issues that you need to be aware of." I came to a stop beside a decommissioned hulk of an antiquated Main Battle Tank. This ugly mechanical beast had once carved death and destruction across every modern battlefield that humanity had ever fought in. Though such artificial weapons were made of metals, the exterior armor of the Tank seemed more akin to concrete. Cold. Hard. Dense beyond belief.

I sat down on the steel plates that wove one track of the MBT's isosceles trapezium treads. The massive one-hundred-and-ten millimeter smoothbore barrel above my head was aimed up into the sky, as though in a salute. The Tank's olive green paint and cameo brush tones accentuated the olive coloration of my own BDU, hinting at this weapon's jungle terrain history.

These MBTs had once served as intrinsic elements for the defense of humanity's supremacy.

...And the little orange dog at my hip represented the alien monsters that had triumphed over that supremacy. The irony of how mankind had come to rely on these same invading monsters for our survival did not escape me.

Evolution.

Even humanity could adapt at an unbelievable speed.

"We have a mission update, Cortez. We're keeping close tabs on a very powerful and dangerous individual. Now, I know that you've never met him, but I might have made mention of him in the past. His name is TH. He's a mass murdering, inhumane, and soulless freak. He commands a host of Championship Ghosts, so you need to be ready for some freaky levels of paranormal activity. Normally, I'd spare you the agony and keep you sequestered in your Pokeball, but I need you at my side, Cortez…" I shuddered, and Cortez moved his bandaged ass closer to me.

I had my number two's support.

"That's item one. But I also need your help somewhere else, Cortez…" I reached down for my belt, and lifted the new Heavy Ball from its clasp.

"We have… a new squad member. And I don't think that you or Vauban are gonna like this one anymore than I do. But we're stuck with him, so we all have to buck up, and stomach this load of bullshit…" My voice had gone hoarse with anger, as I struggled to repress the rage that clenched every muscle in my neck and shoulders, and shook my gnashing teeth in a jarring breath.

Cortez was eyeing me warily, but he wasn't nervous for his own sake.

My dog was worried about me, and Cortez's obvious concern was enough to help me win the fight.

"We're going through hell again, Cortez. I'm walking us right into the Brink…" I swallowed, putting a shaking hand on my dog's head.

"But I'm gonna get us all through this. We're all gonna get past this with-" Cortez cut me off by biting my hand. It was more of a nip than anything else, but it still shut me up. My mismatched startled eyes lowered to meet Cortez's mismatched calm gaze.

He was telling me, in the special way that only Cortez could.

 _We_ were gonna get through this. I wasn't leading this shitty operation solo.

I had my family at my back, and none of them were gonna leave me behind.

"You're a better dog than I deserve, Cortez… I've caught myself thinking that so many times… I even said it aloud a couple of times… But I've never told _you_ that before, have I?" I asked Cortez, as my voice began to crumble. Cortez sneezed at me again, and fixed me with a warm green eye.

-Cortez knew that he was better than I deserved. But he still wanted me to serve as his CO.

"Damnit Cortez… You'd make for one hell of Colonel, you know that dog?" I slapped my pooch's neck with a smile. Cortez gave me another sneeze, followed by a sarcastic glow to his purple eye.

-Colonel? Now I was just insulting Cortez.

"Well, Cortez… You know the situation. And you get to meet our newest squadmate first. Come on. I've got a scheduled appointment with a Waterloo sponsored Pokemart to attend." I grumbled, pushing myself off the MBT. Cortez gave me the lead, before falling in behind his weary CO.

I put my mask back on, and wrestled the limp back into a steady footfall. Appearances still counted for something, and my Cortez had given me the strength I required to girdle ACE's yoke with dignity.

I didn't doubt for a second that this shit was only going to get worse before, and if, it ever got better.

But I wasn't alone anymore.

And that camaraderie was all I needed to find myself when I felt lost.

"...Cortez? What is it, boy?" I stopped in my tracks and turned back towards my dog. I had only just noticed the sudden lack of dog nails clacking across the the smooth Vermilion streets.

Cortez had come to an abrupt standstill. He was sniffing at the air, and an almost whimsical expression came across my dog's scarred up face, before a painful clench killed the budding look of hope in those mismatched eyes.

"Cortez, what is it?" I asked, my own voice worried. Cortez shook himself firmly, and lifted a shaking paw. Forcefully planting that paw on the ground before him, Cortez took one reluctant step towards me.

"...Cortez?"

Cortez slammed his eyes shut, and lowered his head as the next step brought him even closer to his CO. Then with a visible force of effort, Cortez mastered himself against whatever was eating him, and my dog fell into step only half a pace behind my left flank.

"Are you gonna be alright?" I asked, my concern plain to Cortez's Hunter-Killer ears. But Cortez didn't acknowledge me. He wouldn't even look at me. Cortez had withdrawn into himself, and I knew that pressing right now wasn't gonna help him.

"Alright, Cortez. If you need to… Aw, just fuck it. You know what I mean." I put a comforting hand on Cortez's neck, and gave my dog a gentle rub. Cortez glanced at me for a second, and I could see a new wound opening up in my dog's eyes. But his quick glance was the only hint that Cortez was gonna give me, before my soldier mustered up his facade, and stood every bit as unbreakable as his CO, when the two of them marched their way towards their next destination.

And for all our outwards invulnerability…

...Neither one of us was fooling the other.

…

We were running a bit late for our appointment with Waterloo. Not that I really gave a damn, but upon entering the Pokemart's front door, I still endeavored to appear all hot and bothered just in case someone was waiting to hand me a shitstorm.

-Five seconds later, I really found myself wishing for a shitstorm, instead of what I got.

"Zane!"

Yep. Guess who?

One red leather suit coat. A massive pair of neon orange shutter shades. A hideous neon orange scarf that clashed horribly with every other garment that he wore. He was reeking of cologne and hair care products, and his face was painted in enough makeup to give him the appearance of a china doll.

Old Fuck-Nuts in the flesh.

-Not who I was expecting.

"Chris." I grumbled, ignoring the manicured hand being thrust at my person.

Christopher Motherfucking Lebreau.

-And here I thought that my life couldn't possibly get any worse.

"Zane… We have to work on your presentations. This is a handshake. You know what a fucking handshake is, now shake my fucking hand." Chris groaned in exasperation.

-Better idea.

"Would you break down and cry like a little bitch if I just broke your hand instead?" I gave Chris that nasty fucking grin of mine. Even a fucktard like Chris wasn't gonna test the eager kind of crazy lighting up in my eyes.

"For the love of God, Zane… Don't do that when Indigo's Channel Four interviews you…" Chris pressed his thumb and forefinger beneath the shades and started rubbing his eyes.

"So what are you doing here?" I grumbled, wondering for a second if this was an unwanted coincidence.

-It wasn't.

"I hightailed it out of Saffron after our mutual friends alerted me to your location, and informed me that you'd be at this Pokemart tonight. I'm orchestrating Indigo's interview for you. Vermilion is gonna play host to Indigo's Channel Four and their rundown on the Bastard. I was also advised to bring a camera tonight. Some of our mutual friends suggested that there might be something worthy of coverage occurring here." Chris filled me in. I just sighed.

"So you don't work with Waterloo?" I asked. Chris made a funny face.

"Waterloo? What the hell does Chimera's warmon division have to do-? No fucking way." Chris dropped the last bit in a dead stun.

"Yep. That's why they told you to bring a camera." I grunted.

"A new mon on your roster? What kind?" Chris asked, suddenly as excitable as a schoolboy.

"Not one that I want." I growled. Chris's cheesy smile widened.

"Something dangerous?" Chris asked, his voice nearly cracking from the anticipation.

"-Hardly, and yet at the same time, unbelievably dangerous." Enter a new voice and a strange face. One heavyset woman with a tangle of brown hair and a smattering of facial acne barged in on the conversation, and extended a warm hand to me.

"Doctor Leslie O'Hare. Waterloo Developer. And you must be the Bastard." The smiling woman announced. I shook her offered hand in numb shock.

"Yeah, that's me." I replied, still trying to adjust to the transition.

"And who are you?" Leslie asked Chris suspiciously, who stiffened up at the question.

"Chris Lebreau, Spokesperson for the Pokemon Fanclub, and Zane's PR Agent?" Chris sarcastically announced, as if Leslie should have know about it before hand.

"Right. Okay. Zane. Have you met your new Squadmate yet?" Leslie ignored Chris's indignation, and turned back to me with a question.

"We've been… formally introduced." I growled. Leslie quirked a bushy eyebrow at my obvious hostility.

"Did something go wrong?" Leslie asked, an edge of worry creeping into her voice.

"I take it that you haven't reviewed my service record?" I asked, my teeth gritting over every spoken word.

"Can't say that I've had the honor-" Leslie began all pleasantly curious, but I wasn't gonna let her finish.

"Then let's not go there, and let's just get this fucking over with already." I muttered. Chris, Leslie, and even Cortez was eying me oddly now.

"Well… If you insist…" Leslie seemed slightly off-put by my behavior, but I was beyond caring. Chris and Cortez were only becoming all the more anxious now. Chris was starting to fidget: because he couldn't wait to see what my new mon was, and Cortez was getting nervous: because that dog knew me.

And that defeated tone in my voice did not bode well with my dog's ears.

"I assume you're here to take some pictures?" Leslie turned to my PR Agent. Chris was practically bouncing on the leather heels of his cowboy boots.

"Of course! What level of exposure should I adjust for?!" Chris went fucking nuts as he riffled through his red leather attache case.

"I'll leave that decision up to your photography discretion, Mister Lebreau. Zane? Shall we?" Despite having to deal with the weary asshole in a Ranger's beret, Doctor O'Hare still did her physician best to deal the blow to my person softly.

"Let's do this." I mumbled, gingerly removing the Heavy Ball from my hip.

Chris's eyes widened in dawning awe when he saw the model of my new Pokeball.

"Right this way, please. I've set up a nursery in the aromatherapy ward. We'll have a bit of privacy while I instruct you in the proper maternal techniques." Doctor O'Hare punctuated the awkward statement with a grin.

"Whatever. Just as long as I don't have to breastfeed the fat little fuck." I growled, pushing past the camera fumbling Chris in pursuit of Doctor O'Hare.

For some strange reason, my vehement utterance made the Waterloo Developer laugh.

…

"Okay, Cortez. Try not to freak out." I warned my hound. Cortez tensed up at my side, and fixed a wary purple eye on the Heavy Ball in my hand. Chris was lining the camera up on the designated release platform. Which was a huge and cozy mattress normally utilized in big mon aromatherapy.

"Fat fuck, report." I hissed, releasing the Heavy Ball's trigger. The beam condensed on the mattress, and the five second delay began.

Cortez started growling the instant it took form on the pad.

"Oh my stars…" Chris whimpered as the camera fell from his numb hands.

One fat fucking Munchlax. Inside a building. Within a fucking city.

-An unprecedented event.

"Number six! Number six!" Doctor O'Hare quickly moved to subdued the flailing Munchlax, but the hideous primordial sloth of an infant was succumbing to a panic attack.

"-A little help?!" A desperate Doctor O'Hare looked over at me after the Munchlax just about threw her off itself with one of its noisy bucks. Doctor O'Hare was doing her damndest to soothe the beast with her soft words and a gentle hand.

-And any Ranger could tell you that such an approach was doomed to fail.

"Cortez, hold position and chill the fuck out." The Fucking Bastard hissed to his agitated Second in Command. I marched my ass right over to the flailing Munchlax and the worried Doctor murmuring sweet nothings in his ear. My hands deftly intercepted the Munchlax's baying maw, and my teeth bit down hard on the Munchlax's black button nose. One loud squeal and buck later, I managed to reverse the Munchlax's reflexive backpedal by positioning every kilogram of the gigantic animal right over his unstable rear legs.

That Munchlax hit the ground hard enough to send a dull tremor through the concrete floor. And one _very_ pissed off Ranger was right there on top him, appealing to the infant's desperate survival instincts by crushing his sapling thick larynx in between my iron palms.

"Calm the fuck down _now._ " I growled, positioning my weight over the Munchlax's head, smothering the terrified monster.

-And miraculously…

Zane Bastard proved his aptitude in properly handling infant monsters.

The fat fucker did exactly as I commanded of him. The Munchlax had given up. Where a Doctor's calming words had failed, a Ranger's enforced futility had succeeded.

Submission.

-It's a language that I'm well versed in.

Now that I'd proven my dominance, the Munchlax was assuming the fetal position.

"...Well… It seems that… You have a handle on it…" A startled Doctor O'Hare was looking at me something nervously. The Aromatherapy ward had begun to accrue an audience due to all the commotion. Chris eventually managed to close his gaping mouth long enough to perform his PR Agent job, and ward off the onlookers. Chasing a crowd of employees out of their own Aromatherapy ward with an attitude rank enough to insinuate a correlation between their curiosity and cardinal sin, Chris finally plied his skillset towards doing something other than pissing me off.

"Are you kidding me?" I snorted at Doctor O'Hare when Chris slammed the Aromatherapy ward's door shut on the retreating faculty.

"-This piece of shit is child's play compared to a Nidoking." I spat, loosening my death grip on the Munchlax's throat. Doctor O'Hare tittered meekly.

"That's right. You're a Special Operative in the Corps, aren't you?" Doctor O'Hare's eyes darted to the stained SO bandanna wrapped around my left bicep.

"Like I said, child's play." I grunted, pulling myself off the prone Munchlax. Chris returned to the fold with a renewed expression of disbelief plastered on his face.

"Holy shit… A fucking Munchlax…" Chris put a hand over his mouth in awe.

"One of the first domestic units. That said, Enzo still gave his prototypes the milspec genetic refinement process. We'll get into the science later, though. Let's first work on establishing the care-provider and dependant relationship between Zane and Number six. Have you named him yet, Zane?" Doctor O'Hare asked. A nasty grimace overcame my countenance, as a pair of suggestive titles appealed to my ironic sense of justice.

"I was thinking _Orestes_. But maybe _Deuteronomy_ would better suit my expectations. You know that one passage? Twenty-one, eight, twenty-one?" I sarcastically suggested.

"Twenty-one, eight, twenty-one… Doesn't that passage advocate the stoning of disobedient children to death?" Chris asked in confusion. I snorted.

"Yep. The bible is a beautiful template to live by, ain't it?" I replied. The Munchlax began to whimper.

"Um… Okay, well… The sooner you select a name for him, the sooner he'll have something to respond to…" Doctor O'Hare was clearly uncomfortable with my choice in Munchlax names. Truth be told, I had no intention of naming the fucker after a mythological proponent of matricide, or an unquestionably immoral old-testament passage.

-That's more of TH's theme. Unlike King Creep, Zane Bastard has taste.

"...How about _Machiavelli?_ " I asked, alluding to the father of modern political science with my next suggestion.

"Is that a reference to _The Prince?_ " Chris asked me curiously.

Color me surprised. Old Fuck-Nuts knew his history, and was proving smart enough to correlate the name's implication with my new mon.

" _...Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved?" -Nicolo Machiavelli: "The Prince," Chapter XVII: Concerning Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether it is Better to be Loved than Feared..._

"Kinda what I was thinking, yeah…" I grumbled reluctantly. Doctor O'Hare started tittering again.

"Well, the name is substantially more positive than your other suggestions…" Doctor O'Hare smiled.

-I don't know about that...

"Fine. Mac it is then." I sighed, looking down at the quivering mass of hate at my feet.

"Alright. Zane, can you persuade Machiavelli to come out of his curl? We need to feed him. Soon." Doctor O'Hare asked tentatively.

Well, I know how to make mon fear me…

-That's a form of persuasion, right?

"Machiavelli, get your fat ass up." I kicked the huddled Munchlax hard in the forearm.

Mac scrunched up even tighter.

"Machiavelli, mess time. _Now_." Another boot, this one aimed at the head with a higher velocity.

Mac moaned and tried shuffling away from me.

"WHERE THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING, MAC?!" My spitting mouth was scant inches from Mac's shriveled ears. Mac started panicking again.

"If you make me fuck your shit up again, THEN THIS TIME I AIN'T GONNA STOP HURTING YOU WHEN YOU HIT THE GROUND!" My hands had Mac by the neck, and the bucking infant tried to locate his feet. But I knew why Mac was trying to stand up.

Mac wasn't rising to obey me.

Mac was trying to escape the scary Ranger who was hellbent on turning his life into one shortass black and blue blur.

Mac hadn't even put down three meters before I kicked his knees out and fell on his squealing ass with both of my dukes swinging.

It was all coming back. Echo. The Snorlax. My mutilation. Their deaths.

It was all coming back to haunt the Ghost of Echo, as he ransacked his fists, and ground his boots into every tender inch of the Munchlax.

I hadn't beaten a mon this big since my Spec Ops graduation.

...And it would've felt fucking amazing if it wasn't for the hot tears in my eyes.

I had totally lost it. I could hear them screaming again. The pain was alive in every dead tissue, screaming agony throughout my every horrid memory and fatal perception. I could feel that roar reverberating across my ruined body, jarring my every cold and bleeding hole.

 _I was there._

...And it wasn't going to be the shocked Chris who pulled me out of it. It wasn't going to be the frantically screaming Doctor O'Hare who caught my hand when it drew Doug's knife.

There was only one person in that room who could reach me through my haze of animalistic violence and overwhelming grief.

Cortez pulled my ass off Mac in a display of his Hunter-Killer finest. Take down techniques were the lifeblood of pack hunters, and Waterloo had only perfected that inborn tactic. Cortez had me disarmed and on my back before I could even process my sudden relocation.

And there he was.

Both paws on my collars. Those big teeth of his were bared before the tip of my nose, while a guttural snarl billowed me with his hot and foul breath. One angry green eye met my lone functioning one. An orange mass of pissed off striped fur and a huge ugly scar.

-My Cortez.

...Once again reminding his CO of his place.

"...Are you gonna keep me pinned all day, or are you gonna let me do my job, Cortez?" I hissed up at my second in command. Another snarl told me that my response had been registered as the wrong answer.

"...I'm cool, pooch. I'm cool." I kept my tone level, and Cortez's black hackles quivered. But those naked teeth were still holding their position over my exposed throat.

"...Cortez… Let me try again." I whispered in a calm voice.

The green eye softened, and the orange weight on my chest withdrew. I lay there on my back for a moment, just staring up at the white ceiling, before I finally sighed and pulled myself into a sitting position.

Cortez was right there at my side. He might have been a bit disappointed in me, but my dog wasn't gonna let that come between family. I didn't even know that my arm was around Cortez's shoulders until after I had already buried my face into his white mane.

It was just another one of our moments. One of those moments where we both cast aside the soldier for the other.

One of those moments where Cortez and I gave each other the real us.

"Alright… Let's try again." I shuddered as the moment came unto its closure. Lifting myself to my feet, I ignored the bewildered and stunned looks I was receiving from Doctor O'Hare and Chris. I took my heavy steps over towards the terrified Munchlax, who trembled at the sound of those boots drawing ever closer.

It really was just a baby. A big, lost, hurt, helpless, and terrified infant.

Mac had seen my Fucking Bastard side…

...Now I had to show him my other side.

"Mac. Relax." That voice was every bit as decisive as before, but the anger in it was long gone and dead. One bruised knuckle of mine fell upon one shuddering ear of Mac's.

"I ain't gonna hurt you, unless you give me a reason to hurt you." That bruised hand was doing its best to soothe the agitated beast below it. I had an idea of where a Munchlax's sweetspots might be located, and I gauged my new mon for a reaction as I probed the soft tissues of his ears, face, and neck.

"Come on, you fat bitch. Quit your crying already." It didn't matter what I said at this point. It only mattered how I said it.

Even Zane Bastard could curse in a soft tone.

"Come on, show me a weakness…" My hand was joined by the other, and together they adjusted my massage technique by assaulting both of Mac's ears simultaneously.

-Bingo.

Mac went dead silent and absolutely still. Then that massive head of his started lifting from the curl. A bit more vicious rubbing brought about the onset of synchronised rocking from Mac's fatty frame. Then that wheezing mouth of his started opening along its black seam, and chords of saliva started dripping from between his nasty teeth.

"Yeah, every monster has a tender spot, don't they?" I grimaced.

I wasn't ready to open up to this monster. I couldn't bring myself to forget about what his kind had done to me, and those close to me.

I wasn't going to stop hating Mac for being a Munchlax.

But he wasn't the Snorlax that had taken so much from me…

...And that was a start for both of us.

"Can you move Mac over onto the mattress? I don't know if we can move the supplemental nursing system over to him…" Doctor O'Hare had finally found her voice. I don't think that the Waterloo Developer had expected a spectacle quite like this when she had set up her little show.

"Okay, Mac. Come on. Follow me." I moved both hands behind the joints of Mac's lower jaw, before tugging him over towards Doctor O'Hare's mattress. The fat fuck staggered on his unsteady feet, but a scarred up Growlithe wedged his nose into Mac's ankles, and pushed the infant Munchlax in the right direction.

Mac collapsed a few times before he made the mattress, but Cortez and I both ushered him back onto his feet, and guided the blind beast forward. When Mac finally fell into the mattress, he hunkered down as though for a nap, but the wary tilt to his ears meant that he still felt absolutely miserable.

"You know Ranger… There's something to be said about your methods…" Doctor O'Hare was looking at me in a mix of amusement and awe.

"I've never seen a Waterloo Wrangler earn compliance from a Munchlax so quickly." Doctor O'Hare laughed as she shook her head.

"Can we just carry on with this?" I was absolutely spent. Emotionally and physically. I didn't care about praise or incriminations right now. I just wanted to get this over with.

"Absolutely. Now, we've set up an artificial nursing system for the Atlas Munchlaxes. Both the formula and its dosages have been specifically tailored to each individual's genetically projected needs. Too little milk will generate complications with the rapid growth therapy. Too much milk will engender anomalies with the polysynaptic brown adipose tissue's artificial weave… You do know what I mean when I say _polysynaptic brown adipose tissue_ , right Ranger?" Doctor O'Hare smiled at me as she untangled a massive rubber nipple from an Octillery of infeed tubes.

"Polysynaptic brown adipose tissue. AKA: Stimulipids." I grunted. Doctor O'Hare whistled, as if the word itself was the sexiest thing she'd ever heard.

"Right in one, Ranger. Next question: Are you wearing deodorant right now?" Doctor O'Hare asked me that as if it was a casual question. I stiffened up.

"Look, out in the Frontier, pleasant smelling deodorant is a luxury that can get you killed. So maybe I'm not in the habit of-"

"-Perfect. Rub this in your armpit." Doctor O'Hare interrupted my indignant spiel before I could finish. Oh, and she was offering the rubber nipple to me with a smile.

" _Excuse me?_ " I asked, my jaw going slack with shock. Doctor O'Hare's grin widened.

"We want Machiavelli to identify your scent as his maternal care provider's. If he smells your body odor on the artificial nipple, Mac will be fooled into thinking that you're his mother." Doctor O'Hare elaborate. Chris made a retching sound in the background.

"Odour of Ranger? In the little guy's mouth? That's just nasty!" Chris gagged. Doctor O'Hare shook her brown tangle of hair in irritation.

"It'll taste a damn sight better than a mother Snorlax's teat sweat. Trust me, I worked around the big momma, and her smell was foul enough to warrant gasmasks. Zane will taste like mild cheddar in comparison to momma's reblochon." Doctor O'Hare was still waiting for me to grease up the rubber nipple in my armpit, but the change in conversation had piqued my curiosity.

"What happened to the momma Snorlax?" I asked. Doctor O'Hare shrugged.

"That's classified information, Ranger." Doctor O'Hare replied.

"So that means ACE." I grunted, stripping off my coat and pealing off my undershirt. Doctor O'Hare's eyes widened.

"Oh my God…" A hand found its way across Leslie's gaping mouth when my bare torso revealed the scale of my disfigurement.

-What's the matter, Doctor O'Hare? You can work around foul smelling monsters with a smile on your face, but the sight of a mutilated Ranger makes you feel squeamish?

"Jesus Christ, Zane… I didn't think it was that bad…" Chris whistled in the background.

"You ever get chewed up, Chris?" I spat over my dimpled shoulder.

That venomous line shut Chris up tight.

"What… What happened?" Leslie was turning pale as I buried the artificial nipple in one hairy armpit.

"What do you think happened?" I growled, glaring down at the Munchlax on the mattress. Cortez parked his ass my toes, and leaned his back against my knees.

"...You don't mean…" Leslie followed my hateful glance down towards the miserable Mac.

"A Snorlax masticated Zane back in Viridian. That's why he's registered in the Wounded Hearts Project." Chris softly explained.

"Why don't you just hand out my life story on a paper pamphlet, Chris?" I spat. Chris sighed. His noisy exhalation was one part exasperation, and one part resignation.

"Zane… Sooner or later, the world is going to know your life story. You might want to get comfortable with the prospect of fame right now, because before too long? Everybody is going to know that you're a disabled Ranger." Chris was trying to be gentle about it, but those words still filled me with a nauseous dread.

Hailed as a war-wounded hero…

...The very thought of that social stipulation sickened me to my core.

"I'm not a hero… And I'm not a cripple." I muttered, sounding more like an angry child than anything else.

"You have time yet, Zane. Take the adjustment in increments. But it's best that you accept the reality of your situation." Chris was still using that respectful tone, and it was making my skin go cold.

"Does that smell Zane enough for Mac?" I grumbled, thrusting the artificial nipple back towards Doctor O'Hare. Both her and Chris caught the hint.

I was done talking about myself. Let's not keep going down that dark path.

"I'm sure it smells delicious. Now see if you can get Mac to accept it." Doctor O'Hare backed away from my rank offering, a halfhearted grin splitting her face.

-Oh. I had to feed the fat fuck.

"Mac, it's mess time." I sighed, pulling the top half of my uniform back on. Cortez left his supportive position at my feet, and I knelt down beside the unhappy Munchlax with his evening meal in hand.

"Dig in, fatso." I lifted Mac's chin up from his curl, before rubbing the artificial nipple over his lips.

Mac didn't hesitate for second. His genetic programming dictated Mac's response, and the greedy beast just about wrestled the artificial nipple from my grip.

"BEHAVE ASSHOLE!" My fist came down on Mac's nose, and the pitiful monster choked on the formula filling his throat. Struggling to take the nipple from my hands again, Mac discovered the painful repercussions of such bold behavior.

"DON'T TOUCH ME WHEN I'M FEEDING YOU, YOU UGLY FUCK!" I proceeded to beat Mac's face in, until he resumed submissiveness. Then I presented the nipple again to the cautious Munchlax. Hesitantly sampling his meal, Mac practiced an ounce of self restraint.

"Good. Do what I say exactly how I say it, and I won't kill you in your sleep." My voice was stern, but calm. Mac began to grow a bit more aggressive with the nipple, but a growl from me sedated his advance rather quickly.

"Day one, and you're already communicating… That's not bad, Zane. That's not bad at all." Doctor O'Hare sounded impressed.

"So what happened to his head?" I asked, indicating Mac's scarred up dome with a jerk of my neck.

"Waterloo had to make some neurological alterations to the Atlas Munchlax's cerebrum, in order to curb some of their species'… _behavior_." Doctor O'Hare stumbled in her search for an adequate term for describing a Snorlax's environmental interactions, but I already had a damn good understanding of this species' "behavior."

…

Snorlax Fun Fact Number One:

When they're awake, Snorlaxes are eating. When they're eating, Snorlaxes are mindlessly murdering everything around them in order to sate their massive appetites. When Snorlaxes aren't murdering everything around them, they're sleeping off their binge fits.

-That's Snorlax behavior. That's practically it. If you look into their mating practices, you'd understand what an accursed miracle it is that the Snorlax species hasn't cannibalized themselves into extinction yet.

When Snorlaxes meet one another in the wild, the result is never pretty. But come the Snorlax mating season, the females gorge themselves into a coma and release pheromones potent enough to offset the male's hunger pains. Lured by the scent of a chubby female, male Snorlaxes mate with the sleeping female before passing out from exertion. The female temporarily rises from her coma to eat her mate, before hibernating throughout the entire pregnancy, birth, and early maternal period of her cub. When a Munchlax cub is born, it nurses from its mother's unconscious form until the the cub is strong enough to get the hell away from her.

Because if a baby Munchlax is still hanging around the den when mommy wakes up…

...Then Mommy makes herself a tasty little snack out of her baby Munchlax.

Snorlaxes. They're either sleeping or eating. That's what they're programmed to do.

 _-That's all they're programmed to do._

And that extremely simplistic and savage genetic mental coding is what makes their species absolutely impossible to domesticate.

…

"Unlike Professor Oak's approach of lobotomizing the regions of the brain associated with appetite, which resulted in an unresponsive Munchlax that starved to death, Enzo actually attempted the reverse of Oak Laboratories' continuation of Dr. Fuji's suppression theory." Doctor O'Hare began her dissertation on Waterloo's domesticated Munchlax project.

"Instead of removing portions of the Munchlax's brain, Enzo first attempted to restructure the Munchlax's hypothalamus in order to incorporate more complex behaviors in an individual Munchlax's repertoire of social interactions. While we recorded deviations from the standard Munchlax behavioral patterns, none were prevalent enough for Chimera to pronounce a stabilization of the species." Doctor O'Hare began fumbling around with her kit, perusing through a collection of demonstration specimens and Waterloo progression logs.

"So Enzo went back to the drawing board. After Project Leviathan failed so dismally, Enzo became obsessed with developing a functional field model which could incorporate Project Leviathan's artificial stimulipid weave…" Doctor O'Hare located the specimens that she had been searching for, and procured a set of latex gloves and a dust mask for herself, Chris, and I.

"Wasn't Project Leviathan suppose to be Waterloo's attempt at splicing stimulipid production genes within the DNA of a Destroyer Class Wailord?" Chris asked, adjusting his neon orange scarf for the mask.

"That's correct. Unfortunately, the dietary requirements of a Wailord is monumental as it is, and despite the stimulipids' unprecedented combat applications: they do alter a subject's metabolic rate rather adversely-"

"-Yeah, I heard about that. Four Wailords starving to death despite the fact that Waterloo was intravenously pumping tonnes of krill into their stomachs? That flop must have cost a fortune." I interrupted Doctor O'Hare with a snort. The Waterloo Developer sighed, and opened a specimen container.

"Yes, Project Leviathan's failure cost Waterloo a fortune. But we took what we had developed in stimulipid muscle structure imitation from Project Leviathan, and applied it to our Hariyama, Azumarill, and Walrein Projects. I'm sure you've heard about the success of those models?" Doctor O'Hare pulled out a transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator from her kit, and positioned it next to her specimen container.

"Yeah, I've followed every one of Enzo's public projects. I must say, those Azumarills are staggering! The fact that Waterloo was able to restructure the stimulipid deposits into an adaptable weave-!?" Chris started off on one of his Pokemon Fanclub tangents, but ol' Fuck-nuts was brought to a sudden stop when he saw the bloody yellow lump of nasty that Doctor O'Hare had extracted from one of her specimen containers.

"Those models proved that it's possible to artificially restructure stimulipid deposits within Pokemon that are predisposed to stimulipid production. It's a very rare trait in the Para-Kingdom, but there are a handful of Pokemon species that can naturally generate polysynaptic brown adipose tissues. The list of combat applications for stimulipids is incredible. Resistance to thermal fluctuations; improved immunity system responses; dramatically enhanced physical strength and constitutions: That was our basis for pursuing Project Leviathan. With their massive deposits of white adipose tissues, a Destroyer Class Wailord infused with Waterloo's artificial stimulipid weave would have been nigh-indestructible and possibly up to six times as powerful as the natural analogue." Doctor O'Hare paused in her explanation while she inserted a pair of the transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator's probes into the bloody hunk of fat held in her hands.

"But after the prototype Wailords succumbed to their extrapolated metabolisms, Waterloo was forced to set their sights lower than Project Leviathan's ambitious goal. As we discovered, introducing encoded stimulipid production into non-stimulipid producing species only results in a catastrophe. So that's when Enzo proposed Project Atlas." Doctor O'Hare paused again in order to fumble with the settings on the transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator.

"Let me guess… Take the Para-Kingdom's stimulipid specialist species and introduce your revolutionary fat tissue structure into its genetic code?" I sarcastically stated. Doctor O'Hare nodded.

"Out of every Pokemon species to exhibit stimulipid production, the Snorlax species has quite literally evolved for extreme stimulipid exploitation. Every tangible application of polysynaptic brown adipose tissues occurs naturally within the Snorlax species. From the stimulipids' muscle-emulating polysynaptic reflexes; to the brown adipose tissues' rapid and indefinite tissue replication; to the fat deposits' severe temperature resilience. Snorlaxes inherit all of it, and their species possess the largest stimulipid deposits thus far encountered by zoologists." Doctor O'Hare set aside the wired fat sample and turned to both Chris and I.

"Well, the Snorlax species' _behavior_ is a direct result of their evolutionary stimulipid exploitation, so what did Waterloo do to counteract it?" I grumbled, shooting a glance down at the snoozing Mac.

That Munchlax was looking a whole lot happier now that he had a stomach full of milk. Mac had nodded off into fat fuck dreamy land shortly after I had finished feeding him, leaving Doctor O'Hare free to elaborate on Waterloo's Project Atlas without any fear of infantile interruptions.

"Enzo has a reputation for impulsively acting on ludicrous ideas, but his madness is more often than not an exercise of absolute genius. Instead of limiting the Snorlax species' behaviors, he sought to expand them. Ergo… Machiavelli's cerebral mass is almost twice as expansive as his natural counterparts' are." Doctor O'Hare stated with a barely contained excitement.

-That admission locked me up cold.

"...You mean to tell me that Enzo made an unstoppable hyper-instinctive gluttonous death machine _intelligent_?!" I damn near shouted the last bit. Doctor O'Hare swallowed.

"Your hostile reaction is the entire reason why Waterloo elected to keep Project Atlas Top Secret during the development phase. Some outspoken individuals within the private sector wouldn't understand what Enzo is attempting to achieve-"

"-Well, I wonder _why!?"_ I sarcastically shouted with both of my arms cast wide, and a stunned look of cynicism worn plainly on my face.

"In order to promote a Trainer's altruistic interactions with the Snorlax species, we needed to endow the species with a neurological template that is far more complex than their natural design. We'd never engender anything but mentally handicapped beasts if we replicated the Oak Laboratories' cerebral reduction operation. Enzo recognized the problem with Doctor Fuji's procedure, and developed an alternative method for domesticating the Snorlax species." Doctor O'Hare patiently explained.

"By making them cognitive?! Is Enzo off his fucking rocker?!" I wasn't gonna quiet down anytime soon. Enzo Davinci: a confirmed lunatic. Let's give one of the world's most destructive Para-species the ability to adapt their behaviors. Like they weren't already lethal enough as dumb fucking beasts.

"It's the only feasible way to domesticate the species. In Enzo's defense, every other Disaster Index Classification can be trained because of their ability to rationalize dominant relationships. From the Gyaradosia to the Salmance species, from the Tyranitars to the Hydreigon species. All of the most dangerous species of Pokemon can be made to understand authority. That's all Waterloo did to the Atlas Munchlaxes! We didn't give them any more cognitive capacity than what was absolutely necessary for achieving that end!" Doctor O'Hare was at her wits' end now. She could tolerate a Ranger's crude behavior with a pleasant smile on her zitty face, but if anyone dared to question the ethics of scientific advancement…

...Doctor O'Hare would release her inner zealot.

"And do you know why they call the Disaster Index Classification the _Disaster Index Classification?!"_ Unfortunately for Doctor O'Hare, she was dealing with a representative from the polar opposite school of rational zealotry.

"Given enough time, we can alter the species so that they reciprocate benevolent human behaviors! Chimera has made colossal advancements in the field of Draconic conditioning! The Chimera Dragons are the most stable examples of their-"

"-You hear that Cortez? Gale was fucking _stable._ And he just about killed you in a restricted match over a tiny flesh wound-"

"-That was an isolated incident! You can't formulate a judgement for every Chimera product based on the extreme behaviors of just one sample-!"

"-BOTH OF YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Enter Chris with his outdoor voice. I had to give my PR Agent props. He could yell almost as loud as I could.

And Chris could get results. Both the agitated me and the irritable Doctor O'Hare shut the fuck up on the spot.

"Doctor O'Hare. Continue with the demonstration. Please." Chris sounded only minorly patronizing when he spoke, but his snide inflection had an effect. Doctor O'Hare's angry face shifted from a splotchy red to a shameful burn.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to spout propaganda-" Doctor O'Hare began.

"-Well I did." I cut her off in a dead man's voice.

"That's enough out of you, Ranger. For God's sake, Zane… LEARN SOME FUCKING DECENCY ALREADY!" Chris was shaking mad, and for some fucked up reason…

...I was actually feeling guilty about it.

"...Sorry." I grunted at Doctor O'Hare, trying, and failing, to man up to the situation.

"Let's just put it behind us and finish this up. Okay…" Doctor O'Hare drew a deep breath, before focusing her attentions on the wired fat culture.

"This sample represents your common brown adipose tissue. It's known for carrying trace amounts of stem cells as well as fatty aminos, so it serves the body as a caloric energy deposit. Typically, you won't find a culture of brown adipose tissue this large in an organism. Most lifeforms store their excess calories in the form of white adipose tissue, also known as: _fat._ " Doctor O'Hare lifted the transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator, and began twisting the polarity dials.

"As you can see, there's no change in the brown adipose tissue's composition when it is subjected to an electrical charge. It's just a collection of fatty acids, used by the body for only insulation and energy storage." Doctor O'Hare removed the transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator's probes from the lump of fat, before sterilizing the leads. Putting the fat culture back into its container, Doctor O'Hare procured another specimen container.

Unfastening the pressurized lid and removing another sample of significantly darker fat, Doctor O'Hare inserted the sterilized probes into the new culture.

"This is Waterloo's polysynaptic brown adipose tissue, replete with our innovative adaptable amino weave. This culture was taken from a Walrein, which is the closest Snorlax analogue thus far developed by Waterloo. Now when I introduce an electrical charge to the culture…" Doctor O'Hare adjusted the transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator again.

-The lump of fat twitched.

"We observe a nerve spasm reaction. But when I adjust the voltage to the neurologically dictated parameters…" Doctor O'Hare toggled the transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator's settings.

-The lump of fat folded in on itself with a disturbingly quick reflex.

"We observe a drastic change in the culture's physical composition." Doctor O'Hare explained the obvious.

"...That's freaking incredible…" Chris murmured through his dust mask.

I had to admit: It was pretty impressive witnessing a hunk of fat imitating a muscular reflex.

"And now if I specifically tune the voltage within the artificial amino weave's conductive parameters…" Doctor O'Hare carried on with the freak show.

-The fat loosened up, and oozed out like an amorphous puddle, before clenching up into a wrinkled ball that was roughly one-third of its original volume. Another twist on the transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator's dial turned the fist of fat into a spire, before it resumed its puddle-like state of amino ooze.

"...We can finetune the stimulipid structure into whatever form or composition we want it to emulate, dramatically enhancing the Atlas Munchlaxes' combat potential with an adaptative tissue layer." Doctor O'Hare finished the demonstration, and removed the probes from the Walrein culture, before packing the whole ensemble away.

"...So Mac is loaded with that crazy dancing electric jello fat?!" Chris exclaimed in the worst possible graphic phrasing.

"Forty-three percent of Machiavelli's total body mass is comprised of Waterloo's enhanced stimulipids. We've done everything from redesign the amino and neurotransmitter structure, to dramatically increasing the brown adipose tissue's stem cell composition ratio. All of Mac's fat exhibits more adaptability than conventional muscle tissues, and contains eleven times as many active stem cells than the conventional brown adipose tissue comparison. In other words: Mac's fat serves as energy storage, insulation, locomotion, and complex tissue maintenance. Mac can regenerate all forms of complex tissues needed to heal any manner of wounding, including amputation, and our adaptable amino weave means that all of Mac's fat structures can serve as additional muscle power." Doctor O'Hare explained. I looked over at the napping infant in awe.

"...So he's not only going to be smarter than your average Snorlax, but a shitload more robust and powerful as well?" I asked with a shudder in my breath. Doctor O'Hare started laughing quietly.

"Unbelievably more powerful than your average Snorlax. Enzo based the amino weave's concept on Koga Kurasawa's _Shi No Mizu._ You know, the ultra amorphous Muk that the Kurosawa Ninja clan practically worships? Enzo is fascinated with that Pollutant's nigh invincibility." Doctor O'Hare added.

"So Mac is a Snowball?" Chris asked in amazement. Doctor O'Hare quirked an eyebrow at Chris's unusual question.

"League lingo. _Snowball_ denotes a competitive Pokemon classification which strategically utilizes its adaptative traits for becoming ungodly powerful. Generally, Snowballs require a lot of time to set up their defences, hence the moniker: _Snowball._ " I explained to the confused Doctor. Now Doctor O'Haire turned to me with a bemused lift to her left cheek.

"...As in, rolling a snowball down a hill?" I tried again. Doctor O'Hare shrugged with a chuckle.

"My God, I thought you worked at _Chimera Industries, the competitive Pokemon production company? Snowball_ as in: A small problem that becomes a massive problem once it starts gaining momentum?!" Chris exploded. Doctor O'Hare burst out laughing.

"I'm from Waterloo! We use a completely different nomenclature for classifying our warmon than what our competitive branch markets to the League! But if it means anything to you, your _Snowball_ Competition Classification translates into Waterloo's _Juggernaut_ Warmon Classification!" Doctor O'Hare was laughing her ass off. I shot Chris a disgruntled look.

"You know, I've always thought that the League had shit taste compared to the Ranger Corps. So tell me, which one sounds more imposing: Machiavelli the Snowball, or Machiavelli the Juggernaut?" I grumbled to my PR Agent. Chris just sighed.

"I give up… I just fucking give up." Chris muttered.

Doctor O'Hare just about passed out after her next bout of cackling.

…

By the time Cortez and I were finally able to leave the Pokemart, the sun's first angled rays of light hinted at the encroaching dusk. One crazy day lay behind us, and yet many more insane days were scheduled to come. Mac was back in his Heavy Ball, but unfortunately, that wasn't going to last.

Doctor O'Hare had given me more obligations than mere parenteral duty for my unwanted Munchlax. Chimera Industries had also provided me with no end of extra curricular activities:

One: Mac was not allowed to eat anything other than his prescribed formula, all because Waterloo didn't want any excess nutrition screwing up their stupid amino weave. And given the Munchlax species' fondness for gorging themselves on every edible and inedible substance, glutton deterrence was going to be a full time job for me whenever Mac was outside of his pokeball.

Two: Mac could only receive his formula from the designated Pokemarts strewn around Kanto. And I was to continue nursing Mac with my pit-nipple, in the hopes that imprinting would affect Mac's mental development. If I wasn't going to be within range of Chimera's endorsed establishments, then I would have to radio in for Chimera Aviation Units to deliver Mac's formula in the field via air transit.

Three: Due to the Atlas Munchlaxes' status as prototypes, and the unpredictable consequences of their cerebral enhancement therapy, I was officially recognized as an Atlas Project Beta Tester. Meaning that I had to keep a written log recording Mac's every interaction and exchange with the world around him, as well as a log of my own interactions with the fat little pusfuck.

Four: In order for Chimera's rapid growth therapy to work its magic, Mac needed to be outside of his Heavy Ball for at least eighteen hours a day.

-So I was pissed beyond all previous belief.

And on top of all that, Chris had me scheduled for an interview rehearsal first thing tomorrow morning.

Good fucking lord. How the hell was all this shit supposed to work out? Who was gonna watch Mac eat civilians and log his calorie intake while I attended Chris's fucking interview rehearsal?

"...I wonder if I can talk TH into babysitting Mac for a couple of hours. I bet prolonged exposure to TH's Distortion seep would render a Munchlax comatose. That, or maybe Pariah will just cut Mac in half for me… Though I doubt that I could make either scenario look like an accident…" I was in a ripe mood, and Cortez had wisely decided against intervention this time. He walked right at my side, completely ignoring the venomous Ranger towering over him.

"Why didn't ACE just secure me one of Waterloo's Salamencia? The Military's Ophanim Class may be the single most hazardous monster in the service, but at least they're only guaranteed to frag their COs half of the time!" I was nearly spitting with rage, and Cortez started picking up the pace.

"Or a fucking Siege Class Garchomp! No, fuck that! Dragon-Sharks are way too cuddly! Those bastards only grow four meters tall, so let's make it a Goddamn Breacher Class Druddigon! Those trog fuckers weigh almost as much as a Rhyperior, and they've got the Garchomps' height trumped by three whole fucking meters! Imagine the luxury, Cortez: Our whole squad getting the shit murdered out of them by a Goddamn dragon! But fuck no! We're all gonna get eaten alive by a fucking Snorlax instead!"

Cortez was running now, and the Ranger rant storm was having to sprint to keep up with him. I still couldn't believe that Enzo had gone ahead and weaponized a posse of Munchlaxes before going even further by increasing the size of their brains-

-Wait a minute…

...Why was my Hunter-Killer running?

"Cortez?" I asked in concern.

-My hound only started running faster.

"CORTEZ! HALT!"

Yeah, right. Like that was gonna work.

My dog started putting down his full tilt, and my crippled ass was soon to be left in the dust.

"CORTEZ! I GAVE YOU AN ORDER!"

-And he didn't even hear it. Cortez disappeared around an intersection in a bandaged blur of orange. For a pooch with broken ribs, that Growlithe could still fucking move.

"Cortez-?" I came to a breathless stop at the intersection, looking down the Growlithe free road for any hint of my rogue Hunter-Killer.

-But that dog was long gone.

"What the fuck is going on?" My voice whimpered as a cold fear tied knots in my gut. Cortez had just left me. But Cortez never left me! That fucking soldier had stood by my side all the way from the Snorlax catastrophe on! Why the hell had Cortez ditched me?!

"...Was it something I said?"

Oh, panic was making me think irrational thoughts, as this desperate Ranger tore off in a blind pursuit of his missing dog.

…

A bandage-covered and scarred-up Growlithe moving at mach two makes for quite a scene in Vermilion. Service Growlithes are a common sight in the Military's provincial city-state, but those Growlithes are always accompanied by their COs, and the Military's Hunter-Killers are always the spitting image of canine loyalty.

So I had no problem tracking down my own Hunter-Killer with only eye-witness reports pertaining to a maverick service hound. Although I was held up by a patrol of Skinheads who withheld Cortez's heading just so they could berate a Greenback for his poorly trained service mon. Before I'd even managed a " _just tell me where the fuck he went"_ off, the Commanding Officer of the Skinhead Squad was offering his own Growlithe Hunter-Killer as an example of the Military's superior servicemon training. After the blowhard had provided me with the requested coordinates, I made a brief comment about the Military's policy on matching bootlaces, and the Skinhead CO looked down at his feet just in time to witness his superiorly trained Growlithe finishing up some doggy business on the CO's right boot.

Leaving the Skinheads behind to flog their selectively-urinating Hunter-Killer, I proceeded to the next heading, and found myself at the gated entrance of a public park.

And there he was.

Sitting right at the gates. Mismatched eyes peering past the threshold. As still and as silent as I had ever seen him.

My Cortez.

I made for my disloyal dog with a heavy heel in either boot and the preamble of a vocal thunderhead working the muscles of my clenched jaw. Cortez must have known that I was coming at him with a shit storm, but my dog didn't even twitch his ears. Cortez didn't even turn around to look at me as I approached.

...And I found myself coming up short when a handful of paces separated me from my hound.

Cortez was just sitting there, completely enamored with something beyond the gate. Just staring intently into the park. My feet hesitated to move, and my curious eyes followed Cortez's pointing nose.

Of course there were people in the park. It was early evening, and families were out and about, making the most out of what they could in the fading light of day. Dozens upon dozens of social communes littered the green knolls enclosed within the park's stone walls, but Cortez was ignoring each and every one of them.

-Except for just one pair.

Just one…

That pair…

...Cortez couldn't take take his eyes off that pair.

I was just as silent and as still as my dog. I was just watching them from Cortez's lengthening shadow.

One was an auburned haired woman, maybe a decade older than myself.

And the other was a brown haired boy, only a year or two beyond toddler.

A mother and her son, playing frisbee in the park.

I didn't say anything to Cortez. I didn't move out from under his shadow. I just watched him, as he watched them, and a peculiar sense of familiarity made its appeal to my empathy.

The minutes carried on as we stood there, just waiting. Just waiting for the boy and his mother. Just waiting for the pair to take notice of the Growlithe watching them. But the minutes whispered by, until the laughing woman and her gleeful son packed up their hamper, and finally made for the park's exit.

Cortez began to move. I could just barely see the roll of his throat from my vantage point, but my dog had been static for so long now that I couldn't have missed an orange hair falling from his striped coat. The smiling pair was drawing closer, and Cortez began to shuffle his forepaws nervously.

I could feel the anticipation knawing at some unspoken inhibition of mine, some unknown fear that plagued me for the wellbeing of my dog, as those two drew closer.

The mother and her son were coming before the gate, animately discussing their favorite flavors of ice cream with one another. Any second now, they'd reach Cortez, and both me and my mysterious dog would have an answer for this unusual dilemma.

The mother and son passed beneath the iron arches of entwined ivy held aloft the open gate…

...And then the giggling duo walked right past Cortez without so much as a passing glance.

Cortez didn't turn around to follow them. Cortez didn't whine to draw their attention. My dog just stood there, staring straight ahead into the park, as both the woman and her son carried on down the road behind me, until even the echos of their laughter grew faint and distant.

Cortez just stood there, trembling as if he were coming down with a cold.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, and approached my shaking dog as quietly as I could.

"Cortez."

Two mismatched eyes turned over his scarred shoulder to look at me. One green eye was lost, and the swollen purple eye was grieving. Cortez barely recognized me. He couldn't fully grasp who I was. Why was this strange Ranger speaking so softly to him?

"...Come here, pooch."

I lowered myself onto a knee, and spread my arms out to my wounded soldier. Cortez swallowed hard with a little half shake to his head, before that amazing animal gingerly walked over into my embrace.

"Take it easy…" I whispered as Cortez collapsed into my arms.

"Easy, boy… easy..." I cradled his trembling jaw against my shoulder, and pressed my cheek against his brow.

My invincible soldier. My indomitable spirit. My indestructible friend…

...Was falling to pieces in my arms.

"I'm sorry, Cortez…" That broken voice brought a pained wheeze from my dog.

"I'm sorry, boy…" I tightened my hold on Cortez, and drew him closer to myself.

He was absolutely devastated. He didn't have a mask strong enough to hide this grief behind. For the first time that I had ever seen…

...My Cortez was lost.

...And my soldier needed someone to help him find himself again.

"...I'm here for you, boy… You know that I'm here for you." I withdrew from my sniffling hound, and lifted his chin so that those hurting eyes were level with mine.

Cortez's green eye held my single eye's gaze. I was blind to the purple eye. Blind to his scarred side. But I could feel that hot, knobby, bare skin against my palm. I could feel the waxy dimples rise and shrink against my hand with Cortez's every breath.

He was a reflection of me…

...And as I was coming to learn…

...Cortez reflected a lot more than just the scars of his human companion.

Cortez had a lot more in common with me than even I had dared guess.

"Zane."

Oh, that voice couldn't have come at a worse time, or that awful sensation that heralded his cruel presence.

-But what did I expect?

Ghosts don't revile tragedy.

They hunt for it like starving rats.

And when the heartless eidolons find that mortal woe…

...They can't help but exacerbate it.

This was not fair to my dog. This wasn't fair at all. Couldn't Cortez have his time to grieve before I introduced him to the Devil that haunted me?

"TH."

My voice was as calm as I could keep it. Despite the injustice of it all, I was not gonna be the one to torment my dog with a shitty example.

I expected a smirk to greet me when I turned around. I was prepared for the telltale shaking shoulders of his silent chuckle. I was expecting a host of Ghosts to be standing in his wake, every wraith grinning at me and my wounded dog, gloating over the shackles that bound us to _him_.

...But there was only Theron and Pariah, standing side by side.

Only a blackened King, and his even blacker Knight.

They stood perfectly still. No emotions shown to alter their appearances. A respectful audience to this personal scene.

Two dead souls spectating the living's trauma with forlorn and hidden eyes.

"I hope that we haven't come at an inopportune moment." TH inclined his head with an apology.

"It's always an inopportune moment with you, TH." I held the venom back, but the accusation still stung the Eidolon King ever so slightly. I saw the barest hint of Theron's recoil at those bitter words, and Pariah's protective stride forward confirmed that my insinuation had opened some haunting wound on the Eidolon King.

"Pariah." TH halted his Ghost's advance with a gentle voice. The whirling shrouds converged and calmed around that hulking figure, before the towering Knight fell back to his King's side.

"Very well, Zane. I will meet you at the _Portis de Paris_ when you are ready." TH turned to leave, but I wasn't letting this shadowy bastard call the shots in front of my tortured pooch.

"No, you won't." TH paused in his farewell, and turned back to me with the ghost of a smile playing on his lips.

"I've got a new obligation to attend to. Call it a baby problem. Either way, no five star hotel is gonna let my Munchlax chew up a suite. I'm booking a room on the waterfront. And I'll be sleeping on the floor, because where we'll be patronizing: it'll be healthier than sleeping in the sheets." I met TH's pleased smile with a grimace, and a tiny hint of red began to glow in Pariah's vacant core.

"Of course, Zane. It was quite presumptuous of me to manage your Vermilion accommodations. So if this is to be goodnight, I would be pleased to see both you and your hound delivered to the waterfront. Shall we be on our way?"

Goddamn, I really hated that vile smirk.

"Whatever makes his highness happy." I answered in a snide and childish tone, starting off towards the southern port. Cortez hurried to my shadow, warily following me in my footsteps.

And there were those fucked up chuckles of TH's, rising to greet us at our approach.

"Come Pariah. Walk with me." TH pleasantly droned as he fell into step beside myself, and the shrouded Knight took position just behind his King's right shoulder.

"So this is the brave Cortez? I must say, that is quite an impressive scar… Earned through loyal service, was it not?"

I didn't answer TH. I kept my dead eyes fixed straight ahead, doing my damndest to ignore the Devil at my shoulder.

"Quite the companion you have yourself, Zane… Quite the companion indeed…" TH gazed back at my staggering dog, whose suffering was now being compounded by both TH's fucking miserable Distortion seep and Pariah's oppressive shadow.

"Leave my fucking hound alone, you soulless freak." It wasn't a growl. It wasn't a hiss. It wasn't a plea.

It was an order, given to the Eidolon King in Zane Bastard's tone of command. TH's eyebrows raised above the rims of his shades, and another set of chuckles rocked the Devil's frame.

"Do tread carefully, Zane… You've seen the examples of those who've come before you. Mademoiselle Misty Willows may have fallen to her reckless ambition… But was not Monsieur Brock Aissatou also destroyed by his own compassion?" I came sudden stop, and forcefully restrained every fiber of my being from slugging TH right in between those smug as fuck eyes of his.

"Is that supposed to be a threat?" I growled. Oh, I was pissed now, and the whole gathering knew it. That minor red glow of Pariah's lit up with his rabid pupil, and Cortez put himself between myself and TH, before that hound tried to push me away from the Devil in human skin. But I held my ground against Cortez, TH, and the livid Aegislash who was cooly drawing his blade from the Distortion.

TH made one of his lazy gestures towards Pariah, and halted his Ghost's rising sword. Turning his attention onto Cortez, the Eidolon King stripped away his shades, and met Cortez's fucked up eyes with his naked own.

"TH…" I hissed, growing even more furious for TH's obvious assault on my dog. But that pissed off Aegislash made it known what my intervention would cost me, as red-eyed Pariah unravelled his ruined sword.

"As I said, a remarkable companion." TH smiled down at Cortez, before sealing his cursed eyes. Prematurely freed from TH's vision of hell, Cortez only wretched on the first breath of his renewed wind.

"Truly, a Knight worthy of his King." TH replaced his shades, before looking back up at me with that same pleasant smile.

"Are you threatening my dog, TH?" I repeated that furious line. TH just snorted, and shook his head in exasperation.

"It was a warning, Zane. Not a threat. Learn from those who have failed before you, lest you follow them down their damned paths." TH sighed, and proceeded forward.

"And what kind of warning was that!?" I spat after the Eidolon King and his colossal wraith. TH froze in his stride, and turned back to me with the Devil's own grin twisting either corner of his mouth.

"Just a friendly bit of advice, Zane… From one King to another…" TH's nasty smile couldn't have made my skin crawl any more unpleasantly.

But those insinuating words of his…

...Chilled me to my very core.

…

"Goddamnit, Mac…" I didn't even look at the alarm clock. I didn't need to know what time it was to justify this outrage. It wasn't that it was too early in the morning to put up with Mac's whining bullshit.

-It was just that every time I actually started to nod off, that fat fucking Munchlax woke me back up by pissing and moaning.

Parents who claim that tending for infants is one of the most incredible experiences ever, have completely forfeited the lessons of hindsight in favor of nostalgic sentiment.

Because from my first hand experience?

-Raising babies just fucking sucks.

I tossed off the gritty sheets and stomped my way over to the braying Munchlax in the corner. Mac was crying out as if the whole world was coming to an end for no tangible reason whatsofuckingever, and momma Zane had already put up with enough of this infantile bullshit to last a lifetime.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!" I roared for the ninth time this morning, planting one heavy handed fist right into Mac's howling snout.

-I should have known better than to do that.

After flogging Mac four times in a row for this same kind of shit, I should've figured it out.

My senseless beatings weren't gonna shut Mac up. They were only gonna make him cry even more.

"For the love of God…" I spat through my clenched teeth, fists balled at my sides. My disciplinary punch had only inspired a new octave of shrill from Mac for his early morning bellyaching.

"Mac… If I have to kill you for some peace and quiet… So help me God…" I was hitting the red, and that stupid Munchlax was too fucking oblivious to understand what momma Zane's grim tone meant for his health.

A growl sounded out behind me, and a furious Ranger whirled around to face his pissed off number two.

Cortez was running on less sleep than I was, and his foul mood might have been the result of that.

But my Growlithe wasn't bearing his fangs at the Munchlax who had woken him up yet again.

Cortez was glaring daggers at his CO, clearly insinuating that I was being an obstinate prick with those mismatched eyes alone.

"What do you want me to do, dog? Snuggle with the noisy fucker?!" I growled back at Cortez.

Cortez snarled right back at me, and punctuated with a pair of angry barks.

-That was a "Yes."

"You're fucking kidding me…" My livid eyes came down on Cortez, and he met my glare in an ocular stalemate. I wasn't gonna blink anytime soon, and neither was Cortez. I'd had it with this bullshit on so many levels, it was a fucking miracle that I wasn't salivating insane yet.

And Cortez had stomached so much of my bullshit, it was a wonder that he hadn't ripped my throat out yet.

"Are you gonna challenge everything I do, Cortez?" I hissed. My number two answered in a bark, before taking an aggressive step forward.

-Whatever. I'd already had enough of this shit.

"I don't get you, dog… Sometimes I don't get you at all…" I muttered, turning my back on my pissed off fire-breathing mutt, before kneeling down next to Mac.

"Mac, would you _please_ shut the hell up _?_ " Momma Zane chided softly as he stretched his tender arms out for a Munchlax's bleeding snout.

"Really Mac, I want to kill you in the worst way imaginable… So you'd be doing yourself a favor if you'd stop providing me with excuses right fucking now." Momma Zane cooed sarcastically as he rubbed Mac's brow. Mac hiccupped, before his brays broke down into a feeble whining.

"Yes Mac. You're not safe. Not one bit. I've been fantasizing about your disembowelment ever since I first read your dispatch. I want to bury a knife so deeply in you abdomen, that not even Waterloo's-"

-Auntie Cortez cut Momma Zane's soothing ministrations short with another growl.

"I ain't beating him, Cortez. So just let me have this." Momma Zane muttered, as a huge fucking Munchlax curled up around him.

-Peace at fucking last.

But now I had a new problem. There was prison of snoozing fat on all sides of me, and a heavy fucking Munchlax head drooling in my lap.

"I don't like you touching me, Mac." I growled, but the fat fucker had already passed out. I tried to shift Mac's dense jaw off my legs, but a massive pair of Munchlax mitts halted me alongside Mac's soft whine.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I hissed at Mac. How many times did I have to beat Mac before he figured it out?

-Apart from his untimely death, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with Mac, and yet little fucker was still warming up to me.

Cortez settled his scarred self at the Munchlax's expansive outer perimeter, before gracing me with caninekind's smarmiest expression of smugness.

It took me a few minutes of silent glaring before I could finally muster up a command to shake my self-satisfied hound off his moral high ground.

"Well, seeing as I'm kinda grounded on pillow detail… Would you kindly fetch me my Tact. Pad, Cortez?" I growled at my treacherous number two. Cortez sneezed at me, but deftly made to fulfill my request.

After fumbling through my discarded coat for the appropriate article, Cortez returned to fatty ground zero with the device that I had asked him for.

"I still don't know why you tag along with my dysfunctional squad, dog…" I grumbled, accepting the Tact. Pad from Cortez. I expected my Growlithe to answer me with another snort, but instead, my mysterious old Cortez chose to withdraw into himself with a peculiarly awkward display.

"...Is there something going on with you, Cortez?" I asked, my voice worried. But the pooch turned his dogged eyes away from me, and stared off into empty space.

"...Something to do with that woman and the boy?" I asked.

Cortez's vacant eyes only grew even more distant.

"Are you gonna tell me when you're ready?" I asked, and Cortez jolted back to the here and now with a start.

Cortez was pleading me with those eyes. He was begging me not to press.

"...Alright, Cortez… Alright. Just let me know if you need help…" I sighed, turning from my wounded dog and focusing my attentions on the Tact. Pad.

"Alexandria. Bring up ACE's records on Theron Halcyon." I ordered of the device.

A split second later, I was looking into the digitally rendered grey eyes of Kalos's most wanted.

"Hello King Creep… Couldn't wait to fuck up my sleep, couldja?" I grumbled to the mugshot header. Scrolling down from the top image, I perused TH's official bio, before plunging into his ACE dossier.

"Holy fuck…"

There was a fuck ton of information regarding TH. A whole Goddamn library's worth. Everywhere he'd been, everything he'd worn, everything he'd eaten, everything he'd said, everything he'd done for a whole Goddamn year had been recorded by ACE.

-Well, just about everything. Numerous data entries were separated by massive time gaps, often filled with the curious explanation of: _Distortion Mergence._

"What the fuck does that mean?" I grumbled, selecting one of the highlighted info lapses for clarification.

"...You've got to be shitting me…"

-Distortion Mergence. ACE's little technical term for a Distortion sojourn. Meaning that TH was a fucking Pilgrim.

-Of repetitive Distortion visitations.

Which meant that TH should've been tearing his face apart with his own fingernails, and praying to piles of his own feces. Nobody walks into the Distortion and returns with a semblance of rationality. Nobody takes a trip through the nothing realm and comes back sane.

"That ain't supposed to be possible…" I muttered, clicking on another directory link in hopes of an explanation.

-What I got was a synopsis of _Typhon, The Maelstrom._ TH's huge fucking Jellicent.

" _Typhon is believed to serve Theron Halcyon in a variety of functions, the most significant of which is Typhon's suspected ability to engender pocket dimensions within the mechanical parameters of the Distortion. By means of constructing micro-universes that can support life, we of ACE believe that Typhon is capable of providing his Channeler with an enclosed ecosystem, which would allow for secure commute throughout the Distortion's deepest cells…"_

"Oh. Dear. God."

-It was no wonder that Brock had lost to TH and Typhon. If that Jellicent could generate a Goddamn personal-universe in the nothing realm, then what the hell could it do here on fucking Earth?

"If I recall Agent Matusik's info banter correctly, Pariah is supposed to be TH's second strongest Ghost… So does that make Typhon the big cheese? Alexandria, redirect me to TH's big one." I ordered.

A split second later, a new synopsis was revealed to me. And even without looking at anything more than the header, my guts had already turned into cold liquid.

-It wasn't Typhon. Which meant that the universe-engineering-jellyfish was at least number three on TH's roster of World's Most Powerful Wraiths. But I was still slightly familiar with this particular spectre.

 _Exodus, The White Shadow._

TH's fucking Gengar.

I knew a little bit about Gengars. They may not have been the most common of Ghosts, but TH was far from the only Trainer to have Channeled one. Here in Indigo, Agatha Poe of the Elite Four, and Gym Leader Mortimer Dumari of the Johto Division had both Channeled Gengars for competition. But no Gengar that I'd ever heard of could compete with legends like Pariah and Typhon in the department of eidolon prowess.

-Yet this synopsis was about to show me a Gengar that could.

" _Exodus, House Halcyon's Eidolon of War. Though Exodus has passed from Keeper to Keeper throughout House Halcyon's many generations of continued service to the Kalosian Crown, very little is known of this particular wraith. Certain Kalosian legends connect this Gengar with King AZ's theory of Mega-Evolution, and though numerous confirmations of this virtually unknown practice exists within Kalo's historical documents, only one occurrence of Exodus's Mega-Evolution has ever been recorded within the last two centuries. Wielded by Theron Halcyon in Kalos's 932nd League Seasonal Finals, Exodus assumed the semblance of his religious mythos under the order of his Channeler. Though Video Records of the event-"_

- _Video Records_ was highlighted. I clicked on the link before reading any further. I was instantly redirected to a grainy monochrome display. From what I could discern of the video's shoddy resolution, it was a panning shot of a colossal white room, decorated with towering corinthian columns and massive mosaics of stained glass. Four figures stood upon a titanic central dais at the core of this white cathedral, and a sea of spectators filled an amphitheater arrangement of stands above a gilded coliseum.

The camera focused on the four figures located on the coliseum's center stage, and I could just barely discern the blackedout likeness of TH standing calmly in the challenger's corner, right behind a whirling cloud of pitch-black smoke that was wearing the bloodiest grin I'd ever seen.

In the opposite corner stood two women, both of whom were garbed in white. One of these women was adorned in a bejeweled couture gown, and sporting an ornate tiara upon her pixie cut permed black hair. This figure was clearly human, and she was standing both fierce and haughty in her Champion's corner. The other white woman standing ahead of the Champion was incredibly tall, though unseemingly gangly, and her anatomical proportions were alien in their parameters when compared to the human physique. I could see an arrangement of white horns arching back from the corners of her black rimmed eyes, and below her slim thorax bloomed a bridal gown that seemed eerily membranous in both its appearance and animation.

The black cloud of grinning smoke before TH was a Gengar.

And the willowy white woman standing before the Kalos Champion had to be some kind of mutated Gardevoir. There's only a handful of anthropomorphous mon on earth, and only one Para-species possess that pale coloration and those bizarre anatomical distinctions. But there was something wrong with this Gardevoir. It was freakishly tall in comparison to its species' average dimensions, and several of the Gardevoir species' telltale features were profusely exaggerated on this peculiar specimen.

The crummy video made it impossible to tell, but it looked as if the rose-horn of this Gardevoir's thorax had split in two and curved outwards at an oblique angle. The masque's bouquet was unnaturally expansive at the eyelashes, while the gossamer gown's hemline was dramatically bouffanted at the waist, before cinching down into a bell like figure at the ankles. Every Gardevoir that I'd ever seen had possessed a far more modest and trim gossamer gown, not too mention a singular thorax rose-horn.

A rapid french commentary accompanied the otherwise silent video. A dub of the commentator's spiel filled the subtitles, as the countdown for the final round of Kalos's 932nd League Championship match began. Both competitors had priorly been reduced to their last mon. According to the subtitles, Kalos's Reigning Champion had committed her trump card against TH in a desperate effort to reverse a losing battle. Apparently the Champion's trump card had served her well, seeing as her mutated Gardevoir had finally annihilated TH's Typhon, before finishing off his Pariah; but now the Champion's Gardevoir stood opposed to TH's most powerful revenant.

-Exodus, The White Shadow.

For whatever reason, the commentator didn't actually think that TH would trigger the artificial mutation of his Gengar-

-No. Scratch that.

The commentator was _praying_ against TH's deployment of the Absolute White Shadow.

I didn't know if it was just for theatrics or genuine desperation, but the League commentator's french was marred by a nigh hysterical tone, and it altered the dubbed subtitles with an entirely different inflection than what I had originally perceived as mere drama.

Then the blacked-out figure of TH slowly lifted his right forearm until it level with his eyes, and drew back his coat's right sleeve…

-While the commentator began to sputter panicked nonsense…

And then TH pressed the forefingers of his left hand against a bangle on his exposed wrist…

-Before Exodus let out a scream of that eldritch laughter, and exploded with an all consuming nebula of blackened smoke.

Exodus's cloud swallowed everything within the cathedral. TH, the mutated Gardevoir, the opposing Champion, the massive dais, the crowded stands, the entire coliseum… all of it was smothered by the billowing nebula of black smoke.

And when that opaque vapor reached out and engulfed the cameras…

...The video feed turned into static amongst the screams and chanting of the Distortion.

It wasn't the best thing to watch after midnight. Even a Ranger's aft section puckered up icy-tight when shown that level of paranormal activity. I'd seen videos of Lance duking it out against Blaine, back when the Ignis King had last attempted to reclaim his Crown from the Dragonic Usurper, and that entire Championship match had absolutely nothing on the horror and awe inspired by ACE's abridged Kalos Championship finale.

Static was all that remained on the recorded stream. Whatever Exodus and TH had done, it had wiped out the Distortion resilient cameras and God only knows what else. But regardless of the means utilized, TH's battle with Kalos's former Champion had concluded with a certainty.

TH had defeated a Champion. Theron Halcyon had claimed a League Crown.

And as I was about to find out…

...TH had done a whole lot more than just that.

"Holy fuck…"

I'd switched track back onto the Eidolon King's profile, looking for something other than ACE's records of his freaky fucking Ghosts. But why I'd decided to check the tab marked "Casualties" for comfort was beyond me.

There were three tiers of casualties on that tab. One was entitled "Financial Assets," the next was entitled "Diplomatic Assets."

-And the last one was entitled "Personnel Assets."

And there was a ten klick long list of names under "Personnel Assets."

Forget about the twelve digit figure under "Financial Assets." Who cares about the roster of compromised relationships under "Diplomatic Assets?"

There was damn near three thousand different people chalked up as "KIA" on the Personnel Assets' tier. All of whom had been murdered by TH himself or directly ordered for execution by his sovereign decree.

-And as my eyes wandered down the list, I began to notice a disturbing trend.

Every name listed was connected to ACE or a foreign Secret Service in some manner or fashion. Field Agent, Analyst, Outside Consultant, Informer, Executive, Retired and Active… Each and every name was exclusively tied to one regime's espionage division or another.

And despite the scale of this list, the portent regarding each individual's occupation revealed to me one chilling detail. ACE had only recorded relevant personnel to their agenda on this list, which in turn begged the question:

-Just how many civilians and overtly commissioned personnel had been slaughtered by TH?

 _Just how much blood really was on his hands?_

"...I can't believe that I was standing next to him… Holy fuck… All these people-?" I was rolling sick. I couldn't believe that TH's Sinnoh coup was still regarded as his most heinous of crimes. I was looking at a Goddamn record of genocide, and a better half of the world didn't even know who TH was…

-I couldn't speak. I could hardly breathe. The shock had left me numb. To hear about TH's murderous exploits was one thing…

...But it felt like something entirely different to scroll through the list of names and faces that belonged to his victims. It was so easy to refer to the unjustly murdered as mere casualties when you stripped them of an identity…

...But it was something absolutely heartrending to look into the smiling eyes of so many dead souls.

…

"Come on, fatty. You gotta learn how to walk if you ever want to escape me…" I growled, kicking the unbalanced Mac towards the door. Mac just whimpered, and staggered for the garage's exit. We'd bedded down at a mon-friendly hotel, which had advertised expansive lofts for Trainers with big mon…

...At a discount price.

"Holy fucking hell, I am not sleeping in this hole again. I don't know who patronized this dump before us, but they must've brought a Wheezing with them, 'cause this dive smells _foul._ " I grunted as I wrestled Mac's uncoordinated legs into a wider spread, centering his gravity for balance while stressing the joints of his knees.

Mac was shaking like a leaf as his legs threatened to buckle, but Momma Zane wasn't gonna tolerate any form of failure, and the Munchlax already knew what happened when you hit the ground without permission.

"Want some more boot marks on your ass, Mac?" Momma Zane hissed dangerously in Mac's ear. A pitiful whine was Mac's only answer.

"Cortez, straighten out his front mitts. I'll kick him from the rear. We'll make this Munchlax walk as if his life depends on it…"

-Which was an accurate statement, given my waning patience.

Auntie Cortez followed through on my directive, and after Cortez had nipped Mac's front mitts into position, Momma Zane planted a boot on the giant infant's rump, and pushed the Munchlax towards toddlerhood.

-Which didn't quite work as well as Momma Zane had expected.

"Goddamnit, Mac!" Momma Zane was giving the quivering blob of weeping fat a thorough flogging with his feet, and Cortez was letting him do it.

-Within reason.

As soon as Mac got back up on his feet, Cortez gave me the warning growl, and I returned to my furious duty straightening Mac's ass out.

"Mac, you're either gonna learn to walk when I trigger your malfunctioning self-preservation instincts, or you're gonna die when that fails. Now put that fucking foremitt of yours down half a meter ahead you, before I beat you on general principle." I growled. Mac just whined at me.

He was still too young and naive to understand my orders. Complex phrasing was gonna be about as effective as crude phrasing, simply because Mac had neither the experience or cognitive functionality to correlate my behaviors with my verbal commands.

-So in order to communicate with a baby monster, I had to speak a language that baby monsters could understand.

"Cortez, clip his heels." I ordered of my number two.

And a snarling Growlithe chomped down on that Munchlax's shaking front ankles.

Blind Mac put down a heavy lunge, and slammed right into a concrete wall with enough force to shake the room.

"Better Mac, much better." Momma Zane cooed fondly, stroking his crying Munchlax's ears.

"Now would you aim for the door, please?" Momma Zane simpered as he muscled Mac's nose into facing the door, while Auntie Cortez licked at the bleeding wounds on Mac's ankles.

And one snuffling Mac miraculously stumbled towards the door with his first official baby steps.

"That's a good start, fatty. Keep it up-"

-And then Mac fell chin first on the floor.

Once again, Momma Zane was kneeling down to pick up his baby Munchlax with an exasperated sigh.

"One step at a time, Mac. Just one step at a time." I grumbled while Mac burrowed his whimpering head into my abdomen and lap.

…

I got Mac out the door after a half an hour of alternatively babying and bullying him. Despite the fact that we were on a coast, this was Kanto's southern coast. Summer may have been fresh in this hemisphere, but this was still the far south.

So it was still pretty cold at the break of day in the Vermilion sector. Cold enough that my breath crystallized in the brisk and salty air. But it was warming up in the rising light of the sun, and the entire city was smothered in a deep gray mist. So from my location on the waterfront's cobbled lower terrace, I couldn't even make out the naval docks just thirty meters south of my position.

But a part in the fog briefly revealed a gray light illuminating the mist over the water, and a dark figure who was leaning up against the terrace's iron railing, as his shaded eyes peered south towards the unnatural gloaming.

TH was waiting for me.

"Cortez, hang back with Mac. Let him rest up a bit. I'll handle this alone." I swallowed hard as I gave that command in a dead tone, and Cortez put himself close at my knees.

"Don't challenge me on this one, Cortez. I've handled him solo before, and I'm gonna have to do it a crap tonne more in the future. Just keep an eye on Mac." I grumbled, and marched off towards the terrace railing alone.

"TH." I growled as I came to a halt but a few paces away from him.

"Good morning, Zane." TH murmured from his post without turning around to face me. I shuffled uncomfortably behind him. Something about TH's inflection made my skin crawl. It wasn't his typical snide tone. He sounded tired, and curiously pensive.

"Taking your Lamp out for a walk?" I grumbled. TH straightened up, and waved to me with his left hand.

And that's when I noticed the gnarled claw that TH had for a left extremity. Every time before, I'd always challenged the Eidolon King smirk to smirk. But now that TH wasn't facing me, I didn't need to focus solely on his countenance.

"What happened to your hand, TH?" I growled as I came to stand beside the Devil of Kalos.

"Oh, this?" TH sighed, holding up his scarred and mutilated appendage. Half of the tissues on the insides of his fingers were missing, and the hollow of his palm was twisted and warped by the most unseemly of scars.

"...This is where I once held the fire of the Gods…" TH chuckled, though there was something self-demeaning to his tone.

"Did Thanatos do that to you?" I asked, inclining my head towards the soulburner hovering over the water.

"Of course not." TH muttered as he clenching his hand shut, and shifted it into the folds of his coat.

I was looking at TH oddly now. Something wasn't right with him. I'd never seen him this introverted before. I'd never seen him this self conscious before.

I'd never really seen him act human before.

"...How old are you, TH?" I asked, suspicion plain in my voice. TH just snorted.

"Why don't you just consult the Nine Lives's dossier for an answer?" TH snidely responded.

"...Because I'd rather ask you." I growled back. TH jerked slightly in surprise. Finally turning around to face me, the Eidolon King adjusted his shades.

"I must apologize for my former outburst, Zane. I'm afraid I haven't been… sleeping very well." TH muttered.

-I couldn't tell. The swollen and bruised circles around those eyes could been seen through the silhouette of TH's shades.

"...Your age?" I pressed, trying to appear aloof. TH just smiled sadly and shook his head.

"My age is inconsequential, though if it pleases you to know, I have been on this earth for eighteen years now." TH murmured, turning back to his wraith.

"So you're one year older than me then. Next question." I grumbled. TH just started chuckling again.

"You want to know how many wraiths I channel?" TH snorted.

"Would you not do that?!" I hissed, getting all kinds of pissed off, thank's to TH's violation of my mental sanctity.

"Again, I must apologize. I'm afraid that it's become something of a habit." TH murmured softly. My face twitched in anger. I couldn't stand this fucking phantom scan TH kept subjecting me to. TH drew a long and silent breath, before the Eidolon King preceded his answer with a weary sigh.

"...Five wraiths." TH whispered.

"Holy-fuck. Five channels? You're gonna be a corpse before you're even thirty years old." I breathed out in shock.

"Given the appetites that some of my revenants need sate, I will be united with the Distortion well before thirty, Zane." TH casually stated it all, as though his premature death meant absolutely nothing to him.

"Well, don't expect anyone to mourn over your empty grave. Why don't you make it six Ghosts and just save us all the wait?" I growled.

"Pariah. Desist this instant. Let him speak as he sees fit." TH sighed.

-I froze solid. There was a huge fucking shadow looming over me, and a swordpoint pressing into my left shoulder blade.

"Pariah, please. Just leave us be for now." TH's voice was shaking, but it wasn't quivering in anger this time.

TH was struggling just to maintain his dignity as he fought some manner of internal battle.

"You've killed thousands of people before, TH… What's one more fucked up life worth to you?" I hissed, pressuring TH with his own Ghost. And Pariah responded to my insinuation just as I had anticipated. That sword pierced through my coat's shoulder and began to bury its point into the scar tissue of my back.

"PARIAH! I ORDERED YOU TO LEAVE!"

There was the naked TH I was looking for. There was the human being beneath the Devil's exterior. There was a bleeding and vulnerable mortal hiding just behind that monster's indestructible mask.

Pariah's blade withdrew from my shallow wound, and a Distortion rift peeled open as thousands of ropy tendrils poured out into the physical realm.

And now it was my turn to freak out, as another TH calmly strode past the Distortion rift's event horizon, and came to stand between me and the _other_ TH leaning on the rail.

"Pariah, you have disgraced me yet again. Consider your duties to me suspended. Demeter, thank you for your service. You may return to the Distortion with Typhon and Pariah." The new TH addressed both his Knight and his doppelganger in a smooth tone. The first TH's visage began to dribbled like hot candle wax, as the doppelganger's face split apart with the creaking grin of a disguised spectre. A flurry of dead flies poured from that hideous splintered maw, and a single red ball of vile light melted away the remaining human ruse, as it rose above the oozing brow of TH's doppelganger.

"This meeting has been long delayed, Zane." The real TH murmured as both his doppelganger and Guardian marched off into the waiting arms of Typhon. When the Jellicent's slithering rift had sealed behind TH's departing Ghosts, I was left with only Thanatos for company in our audience with the true Eidolon King.

"...What the hell was that?!" I burst out when I could finally speak. TH just chuckled, before he resumed the same rail leaning stance that his doppelganger had originally assumed.

"One of my revenants. A puppet of mine, crafted by my sweetest Demeter." TH murmured as he rubbed his shadowed eyes.

"The likeness is astonishing, is it not? Many would be assassins of mine have been deceived by that elaborate decoy." TH smiled at me.

"...A body double?" I asked, finally overcoming my shock. TH nodded.

"More of a perfect reflection of myself, an extension of my being whose mannerisms and appearances are dictated by mine own. Though I suppose that a body double would suffice for a concise explanation. It's something of a necessary precaution in my life." TH sighed, before turning towards his Chandelure's illuminated hiding place.

"Curious that he wandered here… I wonder if my dear Thanatos once visited Vermilion's coast in the past… or maybe the sea just reminds him of something…" TH continued on with his musings, as if freakish body double revelations were informal occurrences.

I however, was still struggling to adjust to the transition. But the new line of dialogue was catering to a certain discipline of mine. A discipline related to anything non-secular.

"You don't seriously believe that your Ghosts were once human, do you?" I snidely remarked. TH smiled, though his eyes still remained focused on his distant wraith.

"Who was she, Thanatos?" TH called out softly.

The far off Chandelure's light began to dim, and the corporeal image of TH's soulburner faded away into the Distortion, leaving behind only the grey glow of his soulfire.

"So it was a woman… My dear Thanatos…" TH murmured sadly.

The blood turned to ice in my veins.

"To answer your question, Zane… Belief implies a reason to doubt. What I have seen has robbed me of my every doubt." TH turned to me, that same weary smile playing upon his lips.

"...I know that they were once human. I know that they once knew of life…" TH turned back to the distant glow, his saddened smile fading along with the strength of his voice.

"...What do your eyes see, TH?" I asked, warily stepping into a train of conversation that I had little want to pursue. TH burst out laughing at my question, collapsing against the railing with his explosion of mirth.

"I'm surprised that it took you this long to ask, Zane! That's the first question I'm often regaled with at my every introduction!" TH chortled as he forcefully repressed his amusement.

"...I see a world very different from the one you see, Zane. I see the ends of all paths in my vision. I see the manifold conclusions of every event, and the decay of every living thing with these eyes." TH lifted himself off the rail and looked directly at me. I couldn't repress the shudder as those cursed eyes fell upon my person.

"...Even now, Zane… I see the destinations of your every path. I see the repercussion of your every footstep. I can see each and every possible manner of your death with these eyes…"

-I've got no shame in admitting it. I staggered where I stood when he told me that.

"...I see the world as the Ghosts do. I see the passage of time before the epochs have even been realized. I see a world devoid of beauty… I see a world dying of cancer… I see a world where futility is a tangible presence, and where each and every living creature naively staggers onwards towards their own destruction, while each and every one of them are blinded to that very end." TH glanced at me, and the ghost of a smirk twisted his smile.

"Well, almost every living creature…" TH chuckled.

I swallowed hard. For whatever reason, after having seen the world in TH's eyes, I didn't doubt his claim of rotting visions.

-But I did doubt TH's perception of it.

"So you can see the future?" I asked, my voice twisting with derision. TH sighed, and shook his head, as though he was disappointed with my question.

"I see time, Zane. Time and possibility. Not a guaranteed outcome. Not the definitive future. Just every possible end. Just every possible path. Nothing my eyes reveal is certain, for every action we take in the present alters the course of every path fashioned in the time to come. What I see today will be vastly different from what I see tomorrow. So no, I do not see the future as you define it." TH answered in a weary tone.

"Sounds useless when you phrase it like that. Actually, it just sounds miserable and fucking maddening." I snidely replied. TH leaned on the rail, and focused his cursed eyes on the faint glow that his invisible soulburner still radiated.

"It is more of a curse than a blessing, particularly when certain fates have been inscribed in stone. Namely my own…" TH whispered. I followed the Eidolon King's distant gaze over towards Thanatos's sequestered roost.

"...You really think that you're gonna become a Ghost when you die, don't you?" I snorted next to TH. The Eidolon King smiled disparagingly, yet those grey eyes of his never left his hidden Lamp.

"I know what my doom is, Zane. That is the futility of my fate. When it is my time to pass into the blackened lands-"

I wasn't gonna let TH finish. I started laughing my Goddamn head off at the sheer idiocy spouting from TH's mouth.

"Excuse me. I'm so sorry. I thought that I was holding a conversation with a soulless, depraved, hateful, _but intelligent_ human being. Yet it seems that I was fucking wrong about the last part." I cackled. TH turned to me with a slight smile still lifting the left corner of his mouth.

"Then tell me, Zane… What are the Ghosts?" TH posed me with a question of his own. I stopped laughing at once.

"They're physical manifestations of the Distortion-"

"And where do they come by their sentience?" TH cut me off with a growing grin.

"-You call that sentience?" I retorted with a scowl, jerking my head over towards Thanatos.

"And a seculier man wouldn't?" TH asked in an amused drawl.

"Whatever you want to call it, it isn't human-" I growled.

"-Isn't it though? Have you ever known a species other than humanity to practice jealousy, sadism, and self destruction?" TH carried on with that pleasant tone.

"That's not the only thing that makes a human being human, TH." I spat in disgust.

"No. But those are some of our species' most distinctive of primordial traits. And the only organisms known to share those abstract behaviors are the Ghosts-" TH countered.

"-Last time I checked, science reserved the definition of "organism" for entities that display the intrinsic characteristics of life. Ghosts don't meet that criteria-" I interjected.

"-Unrelated semantics, though if you will pardon the inaccurate usage of the term organism-" TH began.

"-No, I won't." Obstinate to the grave. I was born a Ranger, and I'd die a Ranger. Fuck every other social etiquette outside my clandestine upbringing.

"Very well then. If I am wasting my time-" TH sighed.

"-No. Continue. I want to tear your ridiculous belief in an afterlife to the fucking ground." I growled. TH fell back against the rail, and fixed me with another one of his cordial smiles.

"Then answer my question factually, Zane. What are the Ghosts?" TH asked. I ground my teeth into dust. This was the weak point in my argument. My answer was every bit as fallible as the answer given by those who practiced eidolon-veneration.

"...We don't know. Science hasn't reached a conclusion on that subject yet." I grumbled.

"What of Newcomb's theory pertaining to electrical pattern repetition entangled within the Distortion's timescapes?" TH posed a trap to me with a polite smile.

"They disproved Newcomb's electrical imprint theory centuries ago. Since then, we haven't formed a hypothesis with a sound enough basis to explain the Ghosts' existence." I spat. TH chuckled again.

"So your seculier _belief_ has no more substantial support than my personal observations. I know what religious views best align with my theory, Zane… But are you willing to accept that your _scientific_ dismissal of eidolon-veneration is based upon your own shallow religious adherences?" TH asked. I worked my jaw before I answered. And when I answered TH, it was with a level tone and a careful elocution.

"I accept that both our established perceptions are flawed on the basis of insufficient evidence. But that said, I'm morally inclined to dismiss the religious viewpoint on a personal bias." I answered with as much diversion as I could.

"So you _do_ concede ignorance?" TH asked, his nasty grin revealing the failure of my ploy.

"Yeah. I concede to knowing just as much as you do." I answered. TH started roaring with laughter again, but this was clearly an expression of derision at my response.

"I told you before, Zane… I don't believe. You do. I know, and you don't." TH's laughter winded down into chuckles.

"Whatever. Read Catullus XVI for my reply." I growled. TH fixed me with an amused eye, before turning back towards the sea.

"Catullus XVI? That is such a vulgar ode, but I confess a certain fondness for the message that Catullus relayed in between the crude refrain." TH murmured.

"- _I will sodomized and face-fuck you._ Who said that old Rome's lyrical poets had to be decent?" I grinned. TH snorted again, before shaking his head.

"Why am I not surprised that you would only praise the ode for its crass phrasing?" TH muttered.

"That isn't the only reason why I adore Catullus XVI. I admire Valerius Catullus's vulgar challenge of social norms. It takes balls to stand up before an olympian athlete, and declare him no greater than a poet." I answered in a cool voice. TH lifted an eyebrow my way, before he humbly inclined his head towards me.

"It seems that I misjudged you, Zane. Yet again, I must apologize for my rude interpretation..." TH rose from the rail, and gave me his undivided attention once more.

"...So you really think that we become Ghosts after death?" I asked TH. The Eidolon King rubbed his eyes with a groan.

"That is a common misconception propagated by the eidolon-veneration cults. No, we do not all become Ghosts after death-"

"-Only the Godless and wicked, right?" I interrupted TH with a condescending grin. The Eidolon King raised a mutilated hand, and dismissed my interruption with an irritated gesture.

"Once again, you apply biblical edicts to a completely uncorrelated subject. No, not necessarily the Godless and wicked… But rather those who in life, elected to align themselves with the denizens of the Distortion." TH stated.

"That means Channelers only? What an exclusive little club! So you and all your Ghost worshipping buddies can continue torturing the rest of us after your own fucked up deaths? Sounds like a swell deal for you freaks, am I right? I mean, you obviously get off on tormenting everyone around you, and by your own beliefs, you've already guaranteed that you'll be able to do it for all eternity! What a swinging recruitment campaign! _Channel a Ghost and become an immortal sadist!_ I can foresee armies of degenerates rallying around that dogma!" I broke out in a rant, and TH calmly sat back and bathed in it, while his smile grew all the more derisive as I carried on.

"...Yes, I'm sure to your warped religious perception, Distortion convergence resounds with the classical message of a self-fulfilling paradise. But if eternal sadism really is so sweet, Zane… Then tell me why my beloved Thanatos still weeps?" TH asked, as he looked to the dim light of his soulburner.

That line shut me up for good. I could've argued further, quoting the Ghosts' fondness for entertaining deceptions, but Thanatos was a channeled wraith. Meaning that the Chandelure could only act within TH's sphere of sovereignty.

So unless TH was deceiving himself by permitting for Thanatos's delusions, Thanatos wasn't acting out his peculiar behaviors.

If TH was right, then Thanatos was genuinely expressing a humanesque desire for privacy in his grief.

"...I'm done with this fruitless debate. We've established absolutely nothing in this argument." I growled.

"Quite the contrary, Zane… We've both learned something new and enticing from this conversation. And I do hope that you'll partake of such exchanges with me in the future." TH murmured from his position on the railing.

"How hard is it to kill you, TH?" I asked in a perfectly casual voice. Regardless of this morbid question having been asked straight out of the blue, TH only raised an amused eyebrow at me. Lightly chuckling as he unzipped the collar of his quilted coat, TH nevertheless answered my insensitive query.

"Technically speaking, I'm no more difficult to kill than any other man, Zane…" TH smiled at me as he straightened out his posture.

"But those who guard me have insured that my death belongs to them alone…" TH's voice changed into that horrid chorus of octaves. Every time that eldritch intonation rasped from TH's throat, it made my fucking bowels loosen. A child's voice mocked me in time with the furious baritone of an old man, while the voice of a sobbing woman moaned in agony as TH simultaneously spoke their every tongue in perfect unison.

But while that ghastly voice plagued my ears with its unnatural cacophony, a spectacle on TH's throat held my eyes captive in horror.

There was a long and ragged scar drawn across TH's larynx with the aging red signature of a blade's slashing wound. But right above the Eidolon King's adam's apple, in the center of that scar, writhed a swollen and knotted mass of blackened veins.

"-And what the hell is that?" I asked, trying to hide my squeamish countenance.

"That is the closest they have ever come to killing me, Zane… That is where they almost succeeded. But my sweet, sweet Demeter wasn't about to forfeit her prize to mere mortals…" TH smiled warmly at me as he tenderly stroked the knot of hardened black veins upon his throat with a thumb.

-Now I was feeling sick enough to puke.

"...You let a Ghost live in your throat?" I choked. TH shrugged, before he mercifully concealed that hideous mark beneath the zipper of his coat's collar.

"At the time, Demeter's seed spared me of mine untimely death. Now that the wound has healed, I keep her gift within me. Though it no longer serves a medicinal purpose, it would be quite demeaning of a King to dismiss his guardians' service without any form of recompense. In return for her steadfast commitment to my wellbeing, I have allowed my precious Demeter to feed from my flesh as well as from my life's essence." TH's voice returned to its standard musical rasp when he finished explaining the vile root in his trachea.

"That's just fucking sick, TH…" My face went clammy and numb, while my stomach staged a revolution against the rest of me. I was probably turning green around the gills, but I didn't really care about appearances at this point.

There were limits to what qualified as courtesy, and TH's masochistic allowance to his wraiths had surpassed the ordained borders of decency.

TH had brought the parasitic relationship between himself and his Ghosts to a whole new level of profanity.

"As a King, Zane… I willingly bleed for my subjects. As a King… I am obligated to impart mine absolute loyalty to those who grace me with their absolute loyalty." TH waved towards the sea, and a moment later, Thanatos appeared above his mortal liege with a roar of soulfire.

"Now, you and I both have our duties to attend to. I wish you the best in your endeavors, but before I bid you farewell: I would extend an invitation to you, and your company, for a leisurely repast with myself tonight." TH lowered his cadet hat, before addressing me with a polite smile.

"Will I be dining with a Ghost's puppet, or the Ghost's puppeteer?" I asked suspiciously. TH smiled proudly at me, as though pleased with my question, while the grey light of Thanatos grew more intense and penetrating.

"Myself of course. You have more than earned my trust." TH bowed to me, and turned on a heel.

"And what if I say no?" I ground out before TH had taken more than three paces east. TH just kept right on walking, but he still offered an answer to me.

"You won't say no, Ranger. Face it, Zane Bastard… I've earned some semblance of your trust as well..." TH chuckled.

"Don't start flattering yourself. I'm not your friend, TH." I growled.

The Eidolon King just sauntered his creepy way off into the opaque fog, until both his darkened silhouette and his soulburner's unhallowed light had faded away into the heavy mist.

But even after the Eidolon King had disappeared into the gloom, I could still hear the skin crawling cadence of his unrestrained laughter.

 **...**

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 **APU(Armored-Personnel-Unit):** The Military's offering of canned meat to the mon. Decked out with heavy weaponry capable of cutting most fleshy mon in half, APUs are standard fireteam support units in occupation warfare. While the armored exoskeleton and massive gun strikes many as appealing, the inefficiency, required regular maintenance, and "sensitive" hardware limits the gear to urban conflict and perimeter defense. The Ranger Corps has pressed for a Frontier adaptation of the tech, but unfortunately, none of the proposed Frontier APU Harness prototypes can adequately function within the diverse and ever changing terrain that the Rangers call home.

 **F5 Blackwatch:** All of the people that you never want to meet have their names listed here. These freaks are recognized as priority threats to society, having gone one detrimental step further than merely training hazardous monsters: by willfully utilizing such hazardous monsters in widespread domestic attacks. Most individuals on this list are either wanted criminals or under suspicion of 1st degree murder with an F5 mon. Names topping the list include Unova's own Fuhrer Adler and the Chief of his Governing Council, Chancellor Ghetsis. The name currently ranked as the highest threat native to Indigo is none other than the infamous boogeyman: Doctor Fuji. A fugitive of the law for over twenty-five years, Doctor Fuji has been charged with Crimes Against Nature and the Reckless Practice of Medical Science. Doctor Fuji is wanted in connection to the almost mythical Mew-0 Project, whose expressed goal was the resurrection of an extinct species of Lima-Two. As if murdering human beings with living bio-hazards wasn't enough, a madman in a labcoat actually wanted to play God and risk our species' annihilation by reviving a monster that could have killed us all.

 **Stimulipids(AKA: Polysynaptic Brown Adipose Tissue):** My sci-fi explanation for Thick Fat, Huge Power, Stockpile, Belly Drum, Rest… Basically all of the canon's set-up shit that was desperately hankering for an explanation. If you don't like it, then you can settle for magic. But I'm not that cheap. **-** _ **P.S.**_ I'm so totally not knocking on the fourth wall right now.

 **...**

 _ **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Chapter VIII was originally going to cover everything from the Cerulean-Vermilion shuttle trip to the post Vermilion Gym battle. However, after having written nearly 40,000 words and just barely reaching the halfway point of Chapter VIII..._

 _...I had a conflict of conscious. While smashing my own record does sound appealing: I, as an author, just couldn't justify an 80,000 word chapter. So here's to a split in the story. Here's for that much needed pause, so that my audience can pursue a life outside of my novel length chapters._

 _More is coming. Maybe not very soon, but I've found a decent pace. So I'll see you all at the Vermilion City Gym._

 _-But only after we've all sloughed through 30,000 words worth of build up and dissertations._


	10. Chapter IX: Men of Peace, Dogs of War

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 **The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero**

 _Written by,_

 **Vile M.F. Slanders**

 **.\\./.\\./.\\./.\\./.\\./.**

 ***T...T...T...T***

 **I-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-I**

 **\\_v_v_v_/**

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 **V-._.-V**

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 **V**

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" _ **O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it..."**_

 _-Mark Twain; Born November 30th, 1835 as Samuel Langhorne Clemens; Died April 21st, 1910. Excerpt taken from his poetic essay, "The War Prayer"._

 **-v-**

 **Chapter IX: Men of Peace, Dogs of War**

"..."

"..."

"...I thought that I told you to never contact me."

"Get off your high horse, Delimonto. Since when does the Director of ACE get put on hold?"

"Whenever the Director of ACE interrupts my business dealings."

"Business dealings?! You mean managing that rag-tag gang of thugs you have creeping around Viridian?"

"I'm sure that you're aware of my more prominent business dealings, other than the mere thuggery, Director…"

"Yes, I am. And I thought that you'd like to know what might happen to your _business dealings_ , should you continue pressuring Silph-"

"Spare me the bravado, Director. I know that you wouldn't spend a precious hour of your life on a held line just for bungling idle threats."

"Fine. I'll get straight to the point then. I just got off the phone with Enzo Davinci."

"And why would this warrant contacting me?"

"...Because Enzo Davinci made a peculiar request of me. One might even say a _bold_ request."

"Do tell."

"..."

"..."

"...Enzo requested unrestricted access to our archive of Doctor Fuji's materials."

"And what does this have to do with me?"

"You swore an oath, Delimonto. When you resigned from ACE, you swore an oath of secrecy…"

"And is there any evidence to support my breach of confidence?"

"Don't even give me that bullshit! You were the Director of ACE for damn near two decades before you resigned! You know your way through every security loophole and around every fucking surveillance monitor! I don't need evidence to know that it was you who told Enzo about ACE's connection to the Mew-0 Project!"

"Well then... Say that I did alert Enzo Davinci to ACE's role in the Mew-0 Project… Say that I did offer him a brief summary as to Doctor Fuji's little experiment… Say that I was aware of my successor's unofficial revival of my decommissioned brainchild…"

"You backed out of Operation: Wounded Hearts when the Mew-0 Project fell through! You claimed that it wasn't possible without the Mew-0 Prototype! You resigned when Fuji leaked his project to the world!"

"And I stand by what I asserted at my resignation. Without the Mew-0 Prototype, Operation: Wounded Hearts would never have succeeded. And yet my successor endeavors to reinstate that design without its crucial element."

"There are other ways of influencing the populace! We don't need global psionic repression-!"

"Yes, I've been following your little political stunt in the Ranger Corps for months now. I would call it ingenious, except for one small detail that you seem to have overlooked: The population's inevitable rejection of continuous warfare."

"...It'll be too late by then. We'll already be committed to seeing it through to the end-"

"And do you truly believe that involuntary soldiers will win your campaign?"

"...Why did you disclose the Mew-0 Project to Enzo Davinci, Delimonto?"

"Because, regardless of my seat at the sidelines, Operation: Wounded Hearts was _my_ operation. I will not stand idly by and watch as my foreclosed legacy falls prey to my successor's absent foresight."

"...And you actually _think_ that Enzo can succeed where Fuji failed?"

"The man has an almost uncanny ability to rationalize his way through every obstacle. It's apparent in the success of Chimera Industries. It's obvious in the brilliance of his unorthodox designs. And I played witness to it in action, during our Semi-Final League match eleven years ago. Enzo Davinci can deliver the crucial element."

"So you sent him over to me, as your way of intervening?"

"If I haven't made it clear before, Director: Enzo Davinci can surpass Doctor Fuji."

"...Well doesn't that just beat all."

"..."

"..."

"...Let's suppose that I decided to authorize Enzo Davinci's resurrection of the Mew-0 Project. How would it fit in with the current agenda of _my_ Operation: Wounded Hearts?"

"You have your two Core Advocates, do you not? Your two Kings?"

"What are you implying?"

"Your political additions to the original Operation: Wounded Hearts is inspired, but not for the reasons that you might suspect."

"...Go on."

"Need I dig up the past for review? So be it. A rudimentary perusal of Doctor Fuji's journals states that widespread psionic dictation becomes exponentially more effective when the targeted subjects' mob interests reflect the psion's mental directives-"

"Wait, wait, wait! I know that entry! You're saying that by influencing the population first with the two Kings…"

"...A willing servant is far more compliant than a rebellious slave, Director."

"...And you're suggesting a mergence between our two dissimilar itineraries?"

"As far as immediate returns are concerned: your adapted solution presents the advantage. However: in verses of long term investment, my original design maintains the edge."

"And if Enzo fails?"

"...Then I suppose that the ultimate outcome would be no different than what should come to pass if either one of your Kings fail."

"..."

"...I'm offering you fallback insurance in Enzo Davinci, Director. I suggest that you take it."

"So what do you get out of this, Delimonto?"

"The realization of my dream, Director."

"And how is a Gym Leader ever going to reap ACE's harvest?"

"Oh, I won't be a mere Gym Leader should Operation: Wounded Hearts succeed, Director. You should've already surmised what manner of payment I expect for my services..."

"This is my seat now, Delimonto. My show. My ship. My ACE. If you want a position in the hierarchy, then that can be arranged, but I'm not turning over-"

"Good. Now, are there any other concerns worth warranting an extension of this conversation?"

"...Why are you in such a hurry, Delimonto? Don't you have time to catch up with an old colleague? Are the priorities of a Criminal Kingpin really that demanding?"

"You know what is required for leading a worldwide organization, Director. You understand the difficulties associated with managing such a diverse and expansive empire. Now imagine how your priorities might alter, should all your loyal hounds form a habit out of leaping for your throat."

"What a pleasant depiction of your new career. It almost makes me wonder why you resigned from the agency..."

"I resigned from the agency because I grew weary with the constant failures of ACE, Director. As you may well recall, from a personal memoir…"

"..."

"..."

"...Eat a dick, Giovanni."

"And the same to you, Director."

…

"Okay, Zane… Welcome to showbiz!" Chris strode forward with his right hand thrust out to me. I bit back my gritting teeth and clamped the iron vice of a Ranger's reluctant handshake around Chris's extended digits.

"Don't break his hand, Warrant Officer." Lieutenant Roscoe chuckled from the backdrop.

"Smile, Zane. You need to smile…" Chris chided as I relaxed my twitching hand. I wrestled my irritated expression into Zane Bastard's classical livid as fuck grin, and presented that throbbing grimace to Chris Lebreau. After a nervous pause, Chris summoned up every ounce of his Fuck-Nuts, and offered it to me in an exasperated sigh.

"Try not to let on that you're struggling so hard to repress that murderous idiocy, Ranger." Chris released my hand, and used his emancipated extremity to mop his sweating brow.

"Try again, Zane. And this time: At least try." Lieutenant Roscoe cackled as I stomped off the stage.

"Aren't you supposed to babysitting Mac?" I grunted at Roscoe. The Blackhat just snorted at me.

"He curled up with Cortez about five minutes ago. That Munchlax passed out like a tranqued Abra. I don't need to watch your servicemon snore, Ranger. This is far more entertaining." Roscoe chuckled.

"So are you gonna explain to me what a Blackhat is doing here in a cozy studio when there's a world full of high-priority mon to kill?" I grumbled at Roscoe. The Lieutenant just shrugged.

"I have my orders to monitor your performance and wait for the cavalry-"

"-Ladies and gentlemen! Can we hear some noise for the Ranger Corps' own _Zaaaane Baaastard!"_ Chris shouted out my introduction to the empty studio.

"I think he's enjoying this too much." I grunted at Roscoe, before I marched my unwilling self into the center stage on Chris's vocal cue. Coming before Chris Lebreau for the hundredth time today, Fuck-Nuts repeated his interviewer's routine, and thrust a welcoming hand out to my approaching person.

"That's Chief Warrant Officer Zane Bastard to you, civi." I glared at Chris's offered hand and folded my arms across my chest with a scowl.

Much to my delight, Chris Lebreau flew off the handle and started freaking out with one of his eruptive tangents again.

"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?! YOU CAN'T BE FUCKING SERIOUS! IT'S JUST A FUCKING HANDSHAKE AND A FUCKING SMILE, ZANE! IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR?!" Chris was practically stomping his feet and waving his arms around in a startlingly accurate rendition of an uncultured simian's primordial fury.

"Affirmative." I grunted, doing everything I could to keep the encroaching hysteria from mussing up my irritable countenance.

I was far more successful in that venture than Lieutenant Roscoe, who was cracking up behind me like a giddy sumbitch.

"...Get off the stage, Zane. We're taking a fiver. And when we come back to try this again… Get your fucking act together." Chris panted at me, still struggling with his racing heart rate. I did as Chris suggested without a hint of remorse, and walked my ass right off into the backstage. Lieutenant Roscoe left his post in prompter's box to accompany me on my way to the studio's green room.

"It's like poking a Mankey with a taser." I joked with Roscoe as the two of us shared a laugh over Chris's outrageous behavior.

"It's a great show. I'd buy seats to watch it. That said, Zane…" Roscoe cut the chuckles short when I kicked in the green room's door.

"...We had our fun, but you're gonna have to take this seriously from now on. High Command expects you to represent the Corps with dignity in Indigo's interview. Don't piss off High Command by fucking this up." Roscoe told it to me straight. I crashed my ass into one of the green room's sofas, and looked over to my two napping mon, who were huddled up in the corner of the lobby.

My tiny Cortez was sleeping nose to nose with the giant Mac, and the sight of those two dissimilar mon resting so peacefully together rekindled my unpleasant memories.

"You know… Five months ago, that Growlithe led a lone charge on a fucking Snorlax under my orders. Cortez lured a whole swarm of Beedrill onto an intercept course with the Snorlax by using himself as the bait… under my suicidal orders…"

I heard Roscoe pop the cap off a brew, but my distant eyes were still looking at the two sleeping monsters on the other side of the room.

"...And he still acted on my command. There was no hesitation. Cortez put his life into my hands, just as I had trusted my life to him…" I paused to suppress a shaking breath.

"...And we almost made it…"

"That's a good dog you've got there, Warrant Officer. Not every pup in the service would carry out such a reckless directive." Roscoe interrupted my memoirs with an offering of beer. I accepted a cold bottle from the Blackhat Lieutenant, and nursed a stiff draught from the brew's sweating neck.

"How can Cortez look so calm next to a Goddamn Munchlax? After what we went through…" I shuddered.

"That's just the mon for you. It takes a special kind of monster to hold a grudge. It takes an evil piece of shit to commit to a vendetta like that." Roscoe grunted, apparently blind to the ironic analogy presented by his own words.

"So what does that make us? Is every human being just an evil piece of shit then?" I asked the Blackhat Lieutenant. Roscoe snorted over his brew, before fixing a laughing eye on me.

"Mon aren't as complex as humans, Zane. We've got ourselves an excuse for being arrogant, vicious, horrible, cruel, and nasty animals." Roscoe chortled.

"And what excuse is that?" I asked in a dry tone, no less troubled by my Superior Officer's mirth. Roscoe shook his head with a chuckle, before he leaned back into his chair.

"Because we aren't vile monsters all of the Goddamn time, Zane. We can actually do something beyond fucking the world up. The mon can't do that. They're absolute monsters full time." Roscoe replied. I turned back to Cortez and Mac, scrutinizing the two of them as they dreamed on and on in happy mon land, completely oblivious to the conversation that these two Rangers were entertaining over them.

"Cortez has saved my life before. So has Vauban. So has Damascus. Even Darwin has pitched in to save his worthless CO from certain death. And they never asked me for anything in return. They just did it, because I needed their help… That don't seem like the actions of a monster to me, Lieutenant." I muttered, setting aside my half empty beer.

I looked away from my two mon, and met Roscoe's stern glare with my dispassionate eyes. He was slowly rubbing his palms together beneath his frowning chin, while an uneasy slouch had tightened the Lieutenant's shoulders, as he leaned out of his chair and loomed over his own knees. Rangers never humanize their mon. That's a disgraceful practice of mon-humpers, not a disciplined forte amongst mon-killers.

"...Why didn't you tell me about my mother's death, Lieutenant?" I asked in the firmest voice that I could muster. Roscoe sighed through his nostrils as his incriminating countenance crumbled away.

"I never knew about it, Zane…" Roscoe wasn't meeting my eyes when he stared off into the distance.

"You had to have known. You were in on it. You, Captain Lewis, Lieutenant Colonel Rionaldo, all of Blackhat Team Seven, Colonel Howes… You all knew. You all belong to ACE…" My voice was too tired to betray the turmoil boiling over inside of me.

"We all belong to ACE, Zane. You included. Look, maybe some of us knew, but it wasn't ACE who told us. We found out on our own, and when we pressed High Command for an explanation-"

"-So you would petition High Command about it before you'd tell me?" I choked. Roscoe finally met my watering gaze with his reserved eyes.

"We had our orders, Zane. High Command didn't want you getting compromised over the loss of your mother-"

"Look at me!" I cried out, burying my fingers into my left eye socket. Pulling out my fake eye, I faced cold old Lieutenant Roscoe without any shame for my condition.

"I've fucking bled for the Corps! I've put myself through fucking hell for the Rangers! I gave everything I had to you people… Look at me…" My rage burned out to a groan of self-disgust. Lieutenant Roscoe straighten out in his chair, and fixed both of his calm eyes on my weeping face.

"...Couldn't you at least have told me about my mother? Didn't I at least earn that much from you?" I wheezed through the tears.

"...I told you that we were all under orders, Zane. They were shitty orders, they weren't orders that I, or any other Blackhat agreed with… But they were our orders." Roscoe stated in a level voice.

"Yeah… Yeah, whatever helps you all sleep at night…" I spat, jamming my fake eye back into its socket.

"If it's any consolation, Ranger? It doesn't help us sleep. Especially not ol' Lou…" Roscoe murmured.

"Fuck you." I hissed, glaring raw hatred at the Blackhat Lieutenant. Did Roscoe really want to make this about them? Did he really expect me to pity any one of them?

"You have no idea what I'm going through… None of you have a fucking clue…"

"-You're right about one thing, Zane. I don't have a clue about what it feels like to have the Corps stab you in the back over a death in the family. It's never happened to me before. But you know what? I do know a woman who has lost a family member to the Military's shitty coms." Roscoe growled the last bit at me. I went fucking silent in my grief, and glared right back at the Blackhat Lieutenant.

"Did you ever hear about what happened to Lou's little brother?" Lieutenant Roscoe fixed me with a severe eye. I didn't say a Goddamn word. I just kept imposing my fucking fury through ocular contact, daring Roscoe to impart the tale. Roscoe leaned back into his chair with a sigh, and began to relate the account.

"...Years and years ago… Back when I was still a babe in arms and you were but a twinkle in your parents' eyes, Captain Lewis served in a different outfit, instead of the beret she's standing under today. Back during the last Kanto-Johto war…" Lieutenant Roscoe took a hit from his brew, before licking his lips and carrying on.

"Artillery Brigade. FDC. Sergeant Major Mary Lewis of the 16th Railbore Division. She was part of the outfit responsible for shelling both the slant-eyes' garrisons and their front line troops. Her job was to process the incoming ordnance requests, and then to prioritize the strikes before correlating the targeting telemetry for the guns. Ol' Lou was stationed right outside of Indigo back in 1485, _before_ the Argent Downpour. You remember hearing about that little mishap in history class, right?" Roscoe waited for my silent ass to answer him before he'd continue on with the story.

"...Yeah. Johto's seizure of a civilian settlement on the Kanto side of the Argent Mountain Range." I answered. Lieutenant Roscoe huffed, as though my schooling of the event didn't even begin to cover the subject.

"Yep, it was a military occupation. But do you know what kind of occupation the slant-eyes were setting up on their captured mountainside?" Lieutenant Roscoe asked in a cynical voice.

"...A POW camp." I answered numbly. Lieutenant Roscoe snapped his fingers and fist pumped, as though I'd just won the lottery.

"Right in one. Well color me surprised. Yep. It was a POW camp. Now tell me, Zane... What was so special about the slant-eyes' prison camps?" Lieutenant Roscoe continued his grill on my knowledge of past wars.

"...The Johtonese didn't use traditional holding cells. They just dug a pit in the earth, and tossed the captured Kantonese soldiers down into the cistern, before they piled a row of bars and a stack of rocks overhead." I answered. Roscoe didn't celebrate this answer. If anything, his face was growing darker as I relayed the requested information.

"Yep. Those yellow skinned pricks just dumped our wounded and dying soldiers into a damp hole, and then buried them alive. That's how the Johtonese treated their POWs. As if they were less than animals." Lieutenant Roscoe growled.

"As it turns out, old Lou didn't enlist in the Military. She was conscripted, just like so many other Kantonese men and woman in that war. And unsurprisingly, Mary wasn't the only member of the Lewis clan to have been conscripted into the last Kanto-Johto war. Her little brother ended up serving his nation in the Infantry. In the same fucking district as his older sister." Lieutenant Roscoe cracked open another brew, and pulled the rising head out of the neck with a drag that emptied the entire bottle. After wiping his mouth off with a sleeve, Roscoe started on the next bit of the story.

"...I don't think that I need to repeat what your school's history books have already covered about the Argent Downpour, but here's the abridged version just in case you slept through it: A Forward Observation team called in for an artillery strike on a fortified enemy location. This FO team was the first on-site, meaning that they provided Kanto's first intel on the occupation. But the FO team didn't look for any signs of civilian or friendly military units in the killbox. They didn't bother to look for the telltale prison-cairns. Some dumbass Commander fresh out of Vermilion's Academy didn't carry through with a proper observation. He just called in for the guns when he saw the slant-eyes erecting a garrison in the captured settlement's eastern sector, before falsifying his report so as to authorize the barrage ASAP." Lieutenant Roscoe tossed aside his empty bottle in disgust, and fumbled with a cigar and a match as he lit up a fat blunt.

"And that led to the Argent Downpour. One of Kanto's biggest flops in the war. Every gun battery in the Indigo District started firing off the iron rain right into the coordinates provided by a worthless FO Commander. Mary Lewis's battery included, under her own orders. All those Kantonese shells converging right on top of a Goddamn Johtonese POW camp. Now that's pretty fucked up all on its lonesome, but the most forlorn piece of this travesty has yet to have been revealed." Lieutenant Roscoe filled his corner of the room with blue smoke, as he vented the cigar's acrid fumes through his mouth.

"Three days before the Argent Downpour, a Kantonese Reconnaissance unit was shot down and captured by the slant-eyes in the mountains of the Indigo District. A Private Walter Lewis, on advance scout detail. They clipped him out of his roost in the trees, and then hauled his crippled ass off to the nearest POW camp for detainment. Guess which POW camp Lou's little brother ended up at?" Roscoe asked me through the blue haze.

-I couldn't answer. My spine was going cold with the realization, and the fresh horror had stayed my tongue.

"...Lou blames herself for Walter's death. It ain't her fault by any stretch of the imagination. That piece of shit FO Commander may have been dishonorably discharged following indictments of manslaughter and dereliction of duty, but that's far from a cold comfort to anyone who lost a family member in the Argent Downpour. After the war ended with the birth of the Indigo Confederacy, Lou ditched the service and committed herself to the Corps. She didn't really feel like living anymore, and all she knew was killing, so the Ranger Corps put her mindset to good use. And if it wasn't for some crazy Berets looking out for her, ol' Lou would have happily killed herself off years ago, fighting the mon with utter abandon." Roscoe's eyes were watering by the end, hinting at the identity of at least one of those crazy Berets still looking out for Captain Lewis.

"...So next time you see her, Zane… You had better not pull that nobody-knows-what-I've-been-through hogwash with Lou. I know that she won't do a damn thing to correct you for it, but let me set the record perfectly straight right now: _I will_. So unless you want a private beating added to your list of self-victimizing bullshit: You had better treat Captain Lewis with all the respect she's due." Lieutenant Roscoe calmly stated in a level tone, chasing a smokey drag down with a freshly popped pull of yeast.

"...Yes sir." I answered in a hoarse undertone. Roscoe removed the cigar butt from his mouth, and stared at the smoldering blunt in fingers as he pulled himself back under control. There was a long silence in that room while we both recovered, and by the time we'd made it past the emotional ledge, Lieutenant Roscoe decided to speak up again.

"...It's a shitty world, Zane… You know that better than most people. This is a fucked up world to live in, but we've gotta make the most of what we can, otherwise this crummy life is only gonna get worse. So when that dick-breathed pencil-necked fuckhead with the orange scarf puts his hand out to you again: What are you gonna do with it?" Lieutenant Roscoe asked me in a solemn voice, reuniting his tongue with his tobacco.

"...Not break it?" I attempted a meek joke. Lieutenant Roscoe just stared at me in static disbelief, as the smoke from his cigar dissipated into the still air around him.

Then a chuckle loosened a new cloud of fumes from the Blackhat's mouth, before my own chortle added to the noise.

Soon we were both laughing our asses off, rousing Cortez and Mac with our amused ruckus. Thank God we woke them up to the sound of mirth, 'cause the following explosion might have ended in bloodshed if we hadn't.

"ARE YOU TWO DONE FUCKING AROUND YET!?" Chris flung open the door to the green room in a screaming fury. Both Roscoe and I killed the noise, and whipped out our knives in a programmed response to Chris's violent entrance. Chris wisely chose to address us from behind the doorframe when a pair of armed Rangers leapt out of their seats with a hostile intent.

"...Maybe you can yell at Zane as loudly as you want to, Mister Lebreau… But if you ever use that tone of voice with me again, then I'll have to open you up from sphincter to gullet just to teach you a little something about manners..." Roscoe stated in a friendly voice, as the Lieutenant sheathed his ugly knife. I watched as my PR Agent foundered beneath the connotations of a Blackhat's threat, before the asshole recovered enough of his douchebaggery to choke out some cautious words at me.

"Zane, I expected you on the stage ten minutes ago. Get a move on, _now._ " Chris hissed, shooting a nervous look over to the dead-eyed Roscoe.

"Knock 'em dead, Zane. Don't worry about your Munchlax. I'll keep an eye on him while you're rehearsing." Roscoe broke off his mile long stare with my PR Agent, and raised a salute my way. I swallowed hard when I sheathed Doug's blade and answered the Blackhat's salute, before I made my way towards the studio in pursuit of an anxious Chris Lebreau.

…

"All right, Zane. We're gonna try this again. Now remember, how you present yourself is just as important as remembering your script. Indigo won't be asking you the same questions that I'm asking you, but they'll still be covering similar talking points. You may have to ad lib your lines whenever the interview deviates from the talking points, but you'll still need to project constant confidence and charm no matter what." Chris repeated for the fifth fucking time. We'd been yammering on the stage for over an hour, as Chris covered the same boring topics and senseless nonsense ad nauseam.

Now that I had a handle on my talking points, Chris was doctoring up my stage persona. In other words, Chris was cutting every vulgarity that I knew of out of my vernacular, and conditioning my short-tempered demeanor into something that would have been far more fetching for a feckless choirboy.

"Now, whatever you do: _Do not flip out when I mention your medical condition again._ We'll only need to graze the subject for now. Indigo isn't going to expose your personal life until after the interview." Chris growled to the glaring me.

-Yeah. Like I was supposed to take comfort from that last bit.

"Are you ready, Ranger?" Chris asked, settling back in his chair. I took a moment to correct my slouch, before I assumed the very image of ease on the sofa. Chris cleared his throat, and began recital number five.

"So Zane… You've served as a Ranger of the Corps for three years now. Two of those years were spent in active duty at Saffron's Carren Academy. During those two years, you not only maintained the cadet's standard role on Firewatch patrols, but you also underwent Command training in order to obtain the rank of Warrant Officer. That's an unusual approach for most cadets in the Corps your age. Those pursuing the rank of Warrant Officer generally have a long term occupation planned for the service. Did you enter the Corps with the intent of making a career out of the Rangers?" Chris read the question from his list of talking points. I was sick of endlessly repeating myself, but I still managed to smile before answering.

"Well Chris, there's actually a straightforward answer to that. Yeah, I joined the Corps for life when I took my oath in the recruiter's office." I drolled pleasantly with that practiced smile glued to my face like dried honey.

"I've heard rumors about you signing on with the ambition of earning a Black Beret. Is there any truth to these rumors?" Chris moved on to his next talking point, while I sucked down another waste of breath and continued the charade.

"They aren't rumors, Chris. I set my sights on a Black Beret at the age of five, and I'll be damned if I'm not gonna succeed in my childhood dream." I replied in a friendly tone. Chris raised an eyebrow in feigned surprise, before moving on with the show.

"Now your service record states that as well as dual majors in applied mechanics and combat engineering, you also have the distinction of being the youngest Special Operative currently enlisted in the Corps. Those are some lofty accolades in the service. Care to tell us a how you apply your skillset in the field?" Chris asked his next drab question.

"As a Special Operative, I'm expressly forbidden from discussing any classified operations that I carried out in that field. However, on the subject of combat engineering and technical maintenance, I generally work with sophisticated explosive devices and rugged Frontier electronics. Given my rank and training, I'm also qualified to commandeer Non-Commissioned units, so as to form fireteams at my discretion. One of the perks of being a Warrant Officer is that we have the same pay grade and command opportunities of a Commissioned Officer, with none of the bureaucratic drawbacks. It's generally more feasible for a Warrant Officer to take up a position on the front lines than it is for a Commissioned Officer: who would be expected to polish his brass off before addressing the fight." I punctuated the dull exposition with a martial jab, and Chris was pretentious enough to laugh at it for the fifth time.

"So you spend a lot of time on the frontlines then?" Chris asked in idle amusement.

"Not as much as I used to, but that's just the name of game for me now." I answered, still maintaining my cordial exterior.

"Oh, that's right! You're a disabled Veteran in the Wounded Hearts Program, aren't you Zane?" Chris asked in complete nonchalant.

-Oh, that question always pissed me off.

"I prefer the term: _Reinstated Veteran_. I'm still on active duty, Chris." I was supposed to sound slightly annoyed when I answered Chris's question, but I couldn't hide the gritting of my teeth when I reached _Reinstated Veteran._

-There's a whole army of "Reinstated Veterans" serving in the Corps. We Greenbacks are oft to call them "Rangers."

Chris paused again after this answer. I could barely keep the anger down, and being asked that same hateful line over and over again was only making me all the more furious.

"So that's how you ended up competing in the League?" Chris asked, his stern expression warning me about my waning cool.

"Yep. I got fucked up on the frontlines, and some dipshit in High Command thought that it would be a good idea to deploy my broken-down ass in the League instead." I spat, completely ad-libbing my reply.

"For the love of God, Zane!" Chris threw his talking points across the studio floor and rose from his cozy chair, crushing both of his temples with a white knuckled knead.

"You almost had it! You were doing so well, and then you had to go and fuck it all up! Why can't you get that fucking mouth of yours under control!?" Chris roared as he stormed a circle around my chair.

"I love the questions, Chris. No I really do. I love how no one bothers to ask me how I feel about being put on a leash and shown off by High Command. 'Cause Goddamn, if I spoke my mind about that, somebody would get fucking hurt!" I flung my script right off the stage and rose to bodily intercept Chris's pacing circle.

"Are you really that big of an idiot!? This interview isn't about you! This interview is about the Fucking Bastard! Nobody gives a damn about your feelings, Zane! Indigo isn't making a story about your feelings! Everybody just wants to know who the Fucking Bastard is!" Chris spat in my face.

-Oh, fuck the words and praise the pain, I was winding up a right hook for my PR Agent's face after that one, but a new voice interrupted my draw before Chris could even flinch.

"Warrant Officer!"

I checked my swing, and pivoted towards Lt. Col Rionaldo in the attention stance.

"Reporting for duty, sir." Discipline managed to beat the heat, as my conditioned voice assumed the respectful tone expected of my person.

Lt. Col Rionaldo was just off stage left with a dire expression chiseled into his stony face. And standing at the Blackhat CO's shoulder, was none other than Blackhat Team Seven's very own Captain Mary Lewis.

"Is there a problem, Mister Lebreau?" Lt. Col Rionaldo asked in a stern drawl. Chris was panting right beside me, clearly waging a war against his own frustrations as well.

"...No sir. This is just um… Just a little stress clincher playing out. Yeah… We're just trying to get all of that anger out of our Warrant Officer right now. We don't want him to blow up during the interview, so this approach seemed like the best solution." Chris exhaled.

I kept my stance rigid. I didn't even look at Chris, though my curiosity was most certainly egging me on to it. Why the hell was Chris lying about the situation? Chris could've sent me straight off to a Blackhat's wicked tongue lashing, as well as a potential beating, if he provided my superiors with an honest answer.

-Why was Chris trying to cover for me?

"Well, this is your department, Mister Lebreau. I will defer to your expertise." Lt. Col Rionaldo replied, before turning back to me.

"Zane." Lt. Col Rionaldo inclined his head towards me.

"Sir." I answered, never breaking character.

"At ease, Warrant Officer."

My heels separated, and my palms connected above my lumbar. Both Lt. Col Rionaldo and Captain Lewis marched up onto the stage and made a heading for my person.

"Have you been keeping yourself together, kid?" Lt. Col Rionaldo gruffly asked when he came to stand before me.

"I'm still in one piece, sir." I replied, staring dead ahead. Lt. Col Rionaldo sighed.

"When I gave you the at ease, Warrant Officer… I meant that you could relax." Lt. Col Rionaldo shook his head.

I let out my pent up breath in a long wind, before I rolled my neck and shoulders loose.

"Warrant Officer." Captain Lewis inclined her head to me without revealing any hint of our previous trauma.

"Captain." I replied cautiously. Captain Lewis's lips sealed tight, and a glistening despair moistened the corners of her closed eyes.

I could feel a lump forming in my throat as our prior encounter came back to haunt us in this nearly empty studio. Back when TH had revealed the truth. Back when the Devil of Kalos had directed Captain Lewis's knife into my spine. Back when TH had mocked Captain Lewis in her agony, and played ignorant me against a victim of war.

"...I'm… I'm sorry about… I'm sorry." I managed, trying to blink away my own tears.

Captain Lewis started to collapse, just like she had three days past in Cerulean. Back when we'd both been tortured by the Eidolon King. Back when we'd both been stripped of our unswerving martial disciplines, and reduced to wounded humans.

"Do you two need a moment?" Lt. Col Rionaldo asked in a soft voice.

I wasn't expecting what happened next, but that didn't mean that I couldn't respond to it appropriately.

Captain Lewis fell against me with a gasp, as she buried her sobbing face into the shoulder of my coat.

...And I was holding close the cruelest Blackhat of them all, like a shaken son attempting to comfort his grieving mother.

"Mister Lebreau, if you'd accompany me, I'd like to discuss some changes that we'll need to make regarding your talking points." Lt. Col Rionaldo was as cool as a Persian, as he turned away from the two broken Rangers, and addressed the stunned Fuck-Nuts spectating this drama.

"I'm sorry, Zane… I'm sorry…" Captain Lewis whimpered as Lt. Col Rionaldo steered the dumbstruck Chris right out of his own studio.

"It's okay… It's alright…" I muttered, straightening out the Captain, and adjusting my own coat. Captain Lewis just looked at me with those wet eyes, swallowing back her grief and trying to comprehend this transition.

"Lou?" A tentative voice asked from the back stage.

"...You're always late to the party, aren't you Roscoe?" I chortled, tipping Captain Lewis's Beret off its roost with a flick of my wrist.

"Knock it off, Zane." Captain Lewis managed a watery chuckle, as she repositioned her black decorum.

Roscoe breathed out a heavy sigh of relief.

"So everything's cool between you two now?" Roscoe asked, a slight inflection of hope playing in his voice. Absolute silence followed that innocent query.

-Neither Captain Lewis nor I had definitive answer for him yet.

"...I'm still mad about what happened, Cap'n… I still feel like you betrayed me…" I started in a broken voice. That small light of hope in Captain Lewis's eyes began to fade away with a distant resignation.

"...But I… I know… that it's not your fault. And I know… that it isn't fair." I muttered in an undertone. Captain Lewis was regressing back into her usual stern self, meeting my exhausted eyes with that familiar cold glare.

"Well, you're still a dickhead, Zane. But maybe you're not the dickhead that I thought you were." Captain Lewis grunted at me. I snorted, and shook my head with a sigh.

"And I almost missed that rank tone, Cap'n. Now should we bring the Lieutenant-Colonel back in here?" I asked with a slight smile. Captain Lewis raised a radio to her chin.

"Lieutenant-Colonel Rionaldo? We're all clear." Captain Lewis reported.

The studio's audience doors opened, and both Chris and Lt. Col Rionaldo moved up the auditorium's central aisle to take their positions on the stage.

"Lieutenant Roscoe." Lt. Col Rionaldo addressed his subordinate with a curt nod.

"Sir." Roscoe replied, falling into the attention stance. Lt. Col Rionaldo stared at his little trio of Rangers, before the Blackhat CO drew a long and silent breath.

"...Well Zane, I was just discussing some of the events that are currently developing in High Command with our Mister Lebreau." Lt. Col Rionaldo turned to face me. Chris was looking something excited, while Roscoe started chuckling at the sidelines.

"Chris has just informed me that you're scheduled for a Gym Battle with the Military's own Lieutenant Jackie Surge next week. And as of this morning, High Command was petitioned by Vermilion's board of Military Governors for something of a inter-Armed-Forces competition." Lt. Col Rionaldo was smiling himself at this point.

"-Sir?" I asked, a slight edge of concern mingled within my curious tone.

"The Military has taken your Gym challenge pretty seriously, Ranger. So seriously that they just started duking it out with League for a new approach to Gym battles." Lt. Col Rionaldo's smile split into a grin.

"Are they worried about me sinking another League competition complex into the hollow earth again?" I asked, a cocky smile playing on my lips. The two male Blackhats and the lone Chris Lebreau began to chuckle.

"Your destructive reputation probably has something to do with it. Nevertheless, Bastard… High Command thinks that it would be good PR for the Operation, and a morale booster for our Rangers on the frontlines, if you were to accept the Military's proposed battle conditions." Lt. Col Rionaldo continued.

"What kind of battle conditions are being proposed by the Military?" I asked with an amused tilt to my head.

Lt. Col Rionaldo glanced over at Chris with a smug smile forming on the corners of his mouth.

"That's still being argued about within the League, but High Command has joined the Military Governors in their battle against the legislation. Let's just say that the design we're aiming for not only tests a Trainer's ability to compete… But also a Squad Commander's ability to lead under pressure." Lt. Col Rionaldo looked back at me with a sly expression on his face.

"Sounds interesting… Especially if the League is receiving the shaft from both the Military and the Corps." I grinned right back at the Blackhat CO.

"They're stuck in their ways, but the League is fighting a losing battle. The Military Governors have absolute authority in the Vermilion District. All we're trying to push through the legislation now is a recognition of legitimacy in their registry. Suffice to say, Ranger… It'll be a Gym Battle that no one has ever seen before. And it's going to generate a world of controversy across every battlefield from Vermilion City to Indigo Plateau." Lt. Col Rionaldo chuckled.

"Controversy is my middle name." I boasted, earning myself a whoop from Roscoe.

"I'm glad to hear it, Warrant Officer. Because this next bit I'm about to relate to you is most certainly controversial." An evil glint formed in Lt. Col Rionaldo eyes. I didn't say a thing. I was eagerly awaiting the next bit of controversial news with a jolly bounce to my heels.

"Now, because High Command doesn't feel that the Military is being particularly fair about pitting a Warrant Officer against a Lieutenant… They've decided to even the scales…" Lt. Col Rionaldo motioned to Captain Lewis.

"You see, it's just _bad form_ for a Non-Commissioned Officer to square off against a Commissioned Officer. It's the perfect definition of _bad form_. And if Ranger High Command detests one thing above all else: it's _bad form_ …" Captain Lewis approached Lt. Col Rionaldo with a thin black leather case, and stood at her CO's side with that case cordially presented to him at breast level.

"...So loosen the lapels and throw out your blocks, Ranger. Because as of this moment, you are no longer recognized as a Warrant Officer of the Corps." Lt. Col Rionaldo announced with a cool smug.

I was absolutely staggered when Captain Lewis snapped open the case's velvet interior, and revealed a pair of gold bar insignias alongside a Commissioned Officer's Balmoral.

"ATTEN-HUT!" Lieutenant Rionaldo shouted out, and my heels clicked together in perfect unison with the straightening of my posture. Spine perfectly lateral. Shoulders thrown back. Arms held rigid at my sides. Thumb tips positioned over the second knuckles of my curled index fingers. Jutting chin parallel with the ground. Eyes fixed dead ahead. Face set in expressionless stone.

Lt. Col Rionaldo took his sweet time staring down this lowly Ranger beneath him, before he popped loose my lapels and swept my double block insignias onto the floor. Scowling rank disgust at the G.I. apparel worn on my head, Lt. Col Rionaldo tore off my Beret, and tossed it aside without a second glance. Deftly lifting the first golden bar from Captain Lewis's case, the Blackhat CO fastened it to my left shoulder, before taking the second golden bar and fastening it to my right. Buttoning my lapels with swift and precise motions, Lt. Col Rionaldo glared at my bare scalp with disdain. Gingerly raising the Balmoral from its case, Lt. Col Rionaldo flexed the freshly pressed Beret open with his thumbs, before the Blackhat CO placed that red Balmoral upon my naked crown. Lt. Col Rionaldo adjusted the Balmoral's fit to the proper angle, and then stepped back in time with the clapping of my shoulders.

"At ease, Lieutenant." Captain Lewis gave the order as she closed the empty case.

My body readily answered to that spoken order. My posture shifted in accordance with a Commissioned Officer's received command.

"Congratulations, Second-Lieutenant Bastard." Lt. Col Rionaldo extended a hand to me. Three firm shakes at the elbows later, we released each other from the formal exchange, and the studio's surreal atmosphere mellowed out to a casual ambience.

"Seeing as you served as a Chief Warrant Officer before your promotion, your pay grade has been adjusted to the appropriate scale. Your salary is now on par with Roscoe's, and he had to put down two years as a Junior Commissioned Officer to earn it." Lt. Col Rionaldo smiled when he mentioned that last part.

"So I can afford to smoke those imported cigars like rolled chicory now?" I grinned at the disgruntled Roscoe, who raised a middle finger to me in reply.

"As well as the pay hike, your promotion is also accompanied by all the Commissioned Officer amenities. Allocating you private quarters at any Ranger Outposts you may visit; Full access to the Officer's Mess; Full access to the Officer's recreation facilities; Additional funding for travel expenses during extended leave; A cushy retirement package, and an extension of the G.I. bill's benefits. Welcome to the high-class, Zane." Lt. Col Rionaldo brought his hands together in the onset of a modest applause. Every individual in attendance put their palms together for the closure of this private ceremony.

"...I thought that it would take me years to earn my commission. I just made Chief Warrant Officer two months ago. How has High Command justified this promotion?" I asked, my voice growing soft.

"I said that it would be controversial, though if we're going to be honest, Zane? You already had all the credentials lined up, and according to your service record: you did earn it." Lt. Col Rionaldo's impatient tone hinted at an encroaching Blackhat departure. I raised my salute to the Lieutenant Colonel, and he answered it in kind.

"Lieutenant Roscoe, you're coming with me into the Gouge. There's a Mightyena problem south of Saffron that we're going to resolve on our return flight to Cerulean. Captain Lewis, Second-Lieutenant Bastard is all yours. Let's hustle, Rangers. We all have plenty of work ahead of us, and not much time left for doing it." Following those brief words, Lt. Col Rionaldo turned on a heel, and marched out of the studio with Lieutenant Roscoe hot on his tracks.

"Well done, Zane. This going to make the headlines for sure. _Lieutenant Bastard versus Lieutenant Surge…_ I can already hear the phones ringing…" Chris murmured in wonderment.

"Whatever gets your rocks off, Chris. Captain Lewis, what are your orders, sir?" I turned from the misty eyed Fuck-Nuts and addressed my awaiting CO.

"No need to call them orders, Zane. Come on. I'm gonna introduce you to an old friend of mine." Captain Lewis pivoted towards the studio's exit, and I followed at her shoulder without even wishing Chris a heartfelt miserable day.

"Here's your dog and Munchlax. Roscoe had them boxed up for you before the ceremony." Captain Lewis handed me Mac and Cortez's pokeballs as we headed out into the foggy Vermilion noon.

"Great. There goes an hour of Mac's daily pokeball incarceration time." I grumbled, fastening both of the pokeballs to my belt.

"Must be exciting, training a servicemon from infancy." Captain Lewis stated in a dry voice.

"Exciting my ass. I've been itching to murder Mac ever since ACE handed him to me, and that longing has only grown all the worse. Now who is this friend of yours?" I grunted as we set off north towards Vermilion's Military Office precinct.

"A CO that I served under back in the war. One Lieutenant Hewitt Jackson. But you might know him better by his stage moniker." Captain Lewis replied.

"Really? So he's in showbiz then?" I asked. Captain Lewis snorted in derision.

"Yeah, and he's none too happy about it." The Blackhat Captain explained.

"So if he's not known as Lieutenant Hewitt Jackson, then what do they call him?" I asked. I was already shaking my head in exasperation when I considered the prospect of exchanging pleasantries with one of the Military's aging show dogs. Captain Lewis turned to me with the barest hint of a smile lifting one stern corner of her mouth, before she elected to answer my indolent question.

"Like I said, you've heard of him. Lieutenant Hewitt Jackson. AKA: _Lieutenant Jackie Surge._ "

…

Lieutenant "Jackie" Surge. The Lightning American.

I guess I shouldn't be so surprised to recall that "Jackie Surge" isn't his real name.

But "Lt. Surge" is the name that everyone in Kanto praises, and everyone in Johto abhors.

Yeah, Lt. Surge has himself a pretty diverse spectrum of notoriety. So how did this cat become so famous? Was it Lt. Surge's ascent to the Tri-Flame rank in Indigo League's 1,063rd Seasonal Finals? Is it Lt. Surge's freakish size and macho musculature modeling? Is it Lt. Surge's status as one of Kanto's three double-decade long reigning Gym Leaders?

Is it Lt. Surge's status as a war hero?

The answer: Yes.

Lt. Surge is one of Indigo's rare Tri-Flames. Lt. Surge has been featured on every annual cover of _Mass Plus_ bodybuilding magazine since time immemorable. And along with Blaine Breitbarth and Giovanni Delimonto, Lt. Surge has served Kanto as one of its eight Gym Leaders for over twenty unbroken years.

But what separates Lt. Surge from his fellow Kantonese Gym Leaders, and indeed, virtually every other League certified Trainer: Is his _history._

Hewitt Donnell Jackson is living _history._

So that means he's a war hero then? Some might call it a stretch, but even those who would contest Lt. Surge's status as Kanto's patriotic vanguard wouldn't dare besmirch the legend's _history_.

I mean, it isn't like Lt. Surge saved Kanto or anything…

-At least not singlehandedly.

In order to adequately relate the tale to anyone foreign to the Indigo Confederacy, we have to take a little field trip forty-six years into the past. We have to go back to a time when the Indigo Confederacy didn't exist, and the dream of an multinational unification was nothing short of laughable.

We have to go all the way back to when the Lightning American took his first footsteps into Kanto.

Lt. Surge is a naturalized citizen of Kanto. He was born in Unova, amidst one of the countless bloody shifts in that nation's regime. His parents, being the smart motherfuckers that they were, knew what accompanied their nation's frequent coups. So when Unova's old Fuhrer was shot dead by the new Fuhrer, both of Hewitt Jackson's parents absconded on a Vermilion City-bound cargo ship, before the new Fuhrer could announce his predictable and genocidal reformation campaign.

The Unovian couple left everything they owned behind in Unova, and fled that hellish nation with nothing more than their lives, and their one-year old son, Hewitt Donnell Jackson.

After the family of Unovian refugees had been approved for Kantonese citizenship, Hewitt Jackson had himself a relatively standard Vermilion childhood. Which is to say, not a very pleasant upbringing. Regardless of his family's status as citizens, Hewitt Jackson was still a foreigner in a militarized city-state. And of all the foreign nations that Hewitt Jackson had the audacity to hail from, Hewitt Jackson had been born in _Unova_.

-Which at the time, was only one step above being Johto born.

Nevermind the fact that Hewitt Jackson's first conscious memories were of his homestead, Kanto. Or that Hewitt Jackson's family had _fled_ the violence associated with their nation and its people. Nevermind the fact that Hewitt Jackson's family had renounced their homeland in a degrading exercise of conformity, and made every effort to contribute to the nation that had adopted them.

Nope. Fuck empathy. Fuck rationality. Fuck exercising that good old fashioned sense of humanity. Hewitt Jackson had been born in Unova, which meant that Hewitt Jackson had been born a blood drinking savage just like every other soul born in Unova.

So Hewitt Jackson was treated like a blood drinking savage, despite his every attempt to dissuade his fellow Kantonese citizens of that unjust notion.

To read the biographies, Hewitt Jackson signed on with Kantonese Military at fourteen to prove that he wasn't a Unovian savage.

To hear Lt. Surge say it for himself, he forfeited to the Military's service at fourteen, because he'd given up on trying to convince people that he wasn't a barbarian from Unova.

But by joining the Military, and committing himself to the Kantonese cause, Hewitt Jackson proved to both himself, and his countrymen: that even if he was Unova born…

...Hewitt Jackson was still a Kantonese patriot, first and foremost.

In times of war, it takes one hell of a meritorious action to differentiate a single soldier from every other unit in the field. It takes one critical act of heroism to garner national attention and public interest. While the opportunities for minor heroics are innumerable in times of war: the term "heroism" is synonymous with "suicide" among soldiers, meaning that the wise avoid heroism and the ambitious succumb to it. Yet despite the odds, Hewitt Jackson was able to accomplish that nigh-impossible feat, and survive it, only a few short years after he had joined up with the Boomshanks.

Kanto's 79th Airborne Shock Trooper Division earned their nickname, "The Boomshanks" from the most commonly accrued injury in their line of work: Multiple comminuted fractures to the tibia, femur, and vertebra sustained from a tactical jump gone awry. Leaping from the back of a low flying, high velocity Skarmory without a parachute or any landing assistance is a dangerous maneuver all on its own…

...But unsurprisingly: trying to calculate a window for the jump amidst a hail of lethal projectiles adds a plethora of unpleasant variables to the otherwise delicate process.

Yep, The Boomshanks earned their nickname because they considered spontaneously exploding legs preferable to getting shot down by the Johtonese Anti-Air batteries.

And that was just deployment. Warfare entered a whole new level of insanity once the Boomshanks hit the field.

Because when they were boots on the ground, legs broken or not…

...The Boomshanks were some highly mobile and hyper lethal motherfuckers.

Sporting Alakazams for short range quantum entanglement and extra-sensory awareness; Packing Electrodes for blitzing electromagnetic assaults; Hustling the pre-Waterloo Saboteur equivalents into optimum detonation range; And grizzled with Kanto's most extensive of Special Operations training regimens: the Boomshanks wreaked havoc behind enemy lines in the ultimate practice of guerilla warfare.

The Boomshanks did everything that no other single division could. HVT elimination, special reconnaissance, espionage trafficking, booby trapping, tactical bombing, air interdiction, and virtually every other dirty tactic in the wartime guidebook; these bloodthirsty bastards opened up a business wherever they landed, and started purveying absolute hell to any and all Johtonese soldiers who were unfortunate enough to be stationed at the Boomshanks' LZ.

But even serving as a member of Kanto's Elite Special Forces didn't put Hewitt Jackson's ugly mug on the frontpage of the Indigo Declare.

His name didn't even show up in the wartime section of the newspaper until just eight months before the war's conclusion.

But when Hewitt Jackson's face did prop itself up on the front page of Kanto's every media outlet, it wasn't under his birth name.

It was under his Boomshank callsign:

 _-Surge._

Lt. Hewitt Jackson was a combat engineer, specializing in communications tapping and disruption, as well as localized electromagnetic pulse attacks. The Boomshanks' suicidal missions were not devoid of sophistication. When a single platoon is charged with the incapacitation and elimination of an astronomically larger enemy force…

...Playing it smart is the only strategy worth a prayer of success.

Predating his ascent to notoriety, Lt. Hewitt Jackson had himself a rather lustrous wartime record. Serving as the commanding officer of Kanto's most proficient special forces unit may not have made the newspapers, but it was an accolade justified for only the finest Kanto had to offer. Praised by senior command for his unit's reliability, and adored by the soldiers who served with him, Lt. Hewitt Jackson was a shining star on Kanto's frontline.

But what separated this one twinkling light from every other beacon of hope persisting through the shadow of that war, was one critical act of heroism.

 _Kare No Shinsei Kōtei No Hyōketsu._

-Or as we like to call it in Kanto: "The Imperial Storm."

The Imperial Storm was Johto's last ditch effort to free the contested Argent Mountain range from the stalemate that it had hosted since the war's early days, and to claim that terran barricade for the Imperial Legions. Should this mountainous battlefield be taken by one side or the other…

...Then the greatest defense known throughout the wars would be denied the loser, and the victorious could mount their offense on the naked core of their enemy, unimpeded by the treacherous natural topography.

The Argent Mountain range has always been the greatest foe known in the Kanto-Johto wars. It has never once been conquered by Kanto or Johto, and its insurmountable shield has served as the ultimate deterrence for both sides throughout the sways of war. One side cannot defeat the other before those mountains have fallen. Marshalling an army across that hostile expanse is a risky business all on its own…

...But once you cross the familiar peak and into the foreign lands beyond...

...There's an opposing army dug a millennia deep into the unknown country, all lying in wait to greet your bold advance in kind.

The entire Argent Mountain range is a militarized fortification on both sides of its steep inclines.

West is Johto.

East is Kanto.

And ne'er should the line betwixt ever be redrawn.

But Johto was tired of the endless stalemates. The Emperor of Johto himself had named that stretch of rocks " _Bitch,_ " and gambled his entire army in the vainglory hopes of overwhelming the Kanto side with an obstinate invasion, which was simply too foolish for anyone to see coming.

And it _might_ have succeeded, if not for a certain Boomshank Sapper Lieutenant tapping into an encrypted communique between the Imperial War Council and their Legion Commanders.

Lt. Hewitt Jackson.

The first soul in Kanto to learn of the Emperor's intent.

Of course, Lt. Jackson took this information to the Kantonese Department of Defense. And of course, Kanto's Department of Defense discredited it.

The Emperor wasn't dumb or desperate enough to try overwhelming both the Argent Mountain range and the Kantonese Military with a blunt display of force. No one gambles that high for odds so obviously low. But Lt. Hewitt Jackson was convinced that the threat was real. Call it a soldier's instinct. Anyone in a uniform can sympathize.

And Lt. Hewitt Jackson was presented with a terrible choice:

To follow his superior's directive, and return to base for redeployment…

...Or to commit mutiny on a gut instinct, and marshal his platoon against the entirety of the Imperium's Legions.

If I was presented with the same choice, I honestly don't know if I could have made the same decision that Lt. Hewitt Jackson did.

But Lt. Hewitt Jackson isn't your typical human being.

Lt. Hewitt Jackson is a _Hero_ …

...And he proved that when he made the _hard_ decision.

The 79th Airborne Shock Trooper Division.

Everyone of those twenty-eight souls were Goddamn Heroes.

Because, despite the overwhelming and hopelessly dismal odds…

...Those twenty-eight men and women saved their country when they led Kanto's unauthorized counterassault on Johto's Imperial Storm.

Lt. Hewitt Jackson and his unit sabotaged every possible avenue that Johto's encroaching army could utilize in their invasion. Going deeper into enemy territory than any uniformed unit had in the entirety of the war, Lt. Hewitt Jackson strategized his attack on the enemy's greatest weakness:

-Their size.

Moving an army on foot across a mountain range and into hostile territory on short notice requires one hell of a coordinated effort from such an army's command, and Lt. Hewitt Jackson knew it.

Lt. Jackson knew damn well that twenty-eight soldiers weren't gonna put a dent in such an force's momentum with an all out assault, so Lt. Hewitt Jackson focused his attack on waylaying the legions' mobilization, rather than foolishly attempting to kill as many soldiers as they could.

Plying his skills in tactical deployment and communications disruption, Hewitt Jackson and his unit did everything they could to scramble the Legions' advance while Kanto's Department of Defense fought off their shock at the confirmation of Johto's invasion and mobilized their own army to counter the force crawling up the western side of the Argent range.

...And the Boomshanks bought the Kantonese Military the time they required for a proper counterassault.

Only four of the Boomshanks returned to the eastern front alive. The survivors of that flight through hell never breathed a word to the public of what happened on the western side of that mountain range.

But the Johtonese soldiers weaved all manner of tall tales and ghost stories about the phantom platoon that plagued them in the Imperial Storm, and they still only dare whisper the name of the blond giant who led Kanto's supernatural force.

Less than an eighth of Johto's legions scaled the eastern peak intact, before a dismayed and shaken Legion Commander fell upon his own sword when the entire Kanto army demanded his surrender.

Lt. Hewitt Jackson became immortal when the press learned of his maverick act.

-And all of Kanto mourned the loss of the greatest Hero we'd known in that war.

Those four Boomshanks who returned broken and haunted to their homeland?

...Lt. Hewitt Jackson wasn't among them.

And everyone of the four remaining Boomshanks broke down in tears when petitioned for the fate of their Commanding Officer.

Kanto was left to assume that Lt. Hewitt Jackson had made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, and the emotional outcome of his heroic endeavor paved the way for the League's multinational political maneuver.

The war had cost both Kanto and Johto so much, that neither side felt compelled to risk losing anymore. Eight months after the Imperial Storm's rise and fall, the Armistice was signed, and the foundations of a Confederacy were formed.

But it wasn't until three years after the signing of the Armistice that Kanto learned of their Hero's fate.

...And when we did…

...Kanto just about scrapped the Armistice in favor of another war.

Lt. Hewitt Jackson was still alive.

...And he was being held prisoner at the most infamous of Johto's political detainment facilities.

-I'm going no deeper into what happened after that. It's a bit too personal for a good friend of mine, and I will respect his humble wishes. But suffice to say, we managed to get our Hero back from Johto without having to fire a shot.

...We just didn't get the same man that we had hailed as a Master of War.

…

You've gotta love the Military.

We'd enjoyed thirty years of peace with our neighbor, designed a unified congress between our two nations for the purpose of preventing future wars, raised the first generation in a millennia to experience a life free from the firsthand horrors of warfare…

And according to the Military Governors of Vermilion, it could all end tomorrow.

Be prepared. Stand ready. Eyes on the front. Safeties disengaged. The enemy is all around us. They're waiting for us to drop our guard. They're waiting to finish what they started so long ago.

-Paranoia is the mindset of every red-blooded patriot.

So to ensure that Kanto's troops are idling within their patriotic expectations, the Military Governors of Vermilion hold a weekly State of the Arms Address to inspire their troops with a healthy dose of patriotism.

We were the only two berets in that sea of Class A side caps. We were all standing at attention in Vermilion's Central Command courtyard. Every uniform's eyes were facing the Commander in Chief's decorated podium. The entire battalion was looking up at the Supreme Commanders of the Military's various branches, all while bathing in the propaganda that was erupting in a fiery tirade from Chief General Chevy's own mouth.

There was a swarm of nearly a hundred G.I. Magnemites buzzing their joules away as they generated a magnetic deterrence field around the Military's exposed hierarchy. Nothing short of a projectile flung by a rail gun could punch through the Magnemites' protective magnetic field, and should any would-be assassins forgo the conventional weaponry in favor of a sound and simplistic biological attack...

Well, the twenty or so Seeker Class Alakazams in the backdrop were on stand by, just in case their psionics were required to redirect any concussive forces or virulent vapors away from the Commander in Chief.

...And let's not forget the solid battalion of servicemen, trained to react to a hostile intent with a brutal and efficient response, standing at attention in the courtyard.

Security has always been tight in Vermilion, but of these later years, the Military Governors have taken their precautions even more seriously. Ever since their last Commander in Chief was done in by a Separatist attack on one of his routine inspections of Fuchsia…

...Yeah, the Military really doesn't want the Kurosawa Ninjas to score anymore high priority kills.

Yet regardless of the updated defensive scene, the Commander in Chief's message was the same spiel that it had always been.

-Blatant, hawkish, unbridled and shameless fear-mongering and war-praise.

"Unbelievable..." I muttered to Captain Lewis in a underbreath. The Blackhat beside me said nothing, nor made any indication that she had acknowledged my breach of etiquette.

"...We're thirty years past the signing of the Armistice, but here in Vermilion: the war is still raging on." I grumbled.

Captain Lewis snorted.

"You think he's talking about Johto, don't you Zane?" Captain Lewis sounded amused. I swallowed beside her, as I considered the insinuations of my CO's input.

"Johto is our ally now. We don't need to fear them anymore. But there are more nations to this ravaged world than just Kanto and Johto, Zane… And not all of them are on friendly terms with the Indigo Confederacy." Captain Lewis murmured.

"You really think that Unova would attempt another invasion?" I asked, curious as to my CO's thought process.

"That's inevitable. If Unova ever manages to unite beneath a Fuhrer again… Well, Indigo is on the map, just like every other nation. But right now, I wouldn't be worried about Unova…" Captain Lewis inclined her head ever so slightly.

"Who then? Hoenn? Their fricken economy depends on tourism from the other nations. How would a war benefit Hoenn? They're the closest nation, proximity wise, to Indigo. If not Unova or Hoenn…" I trailed off when I realized where Captain Lewis was heading.

"You don't keep up with global events, do you Zane?" Captain Lewis violated etiquette to glance over at me with a severe look in her eyes.

"...We're on good terms with the Concordant. When you consider how similar the Concordant's relationship with Unova is to Indigo's relationship with Unova: it's not too hard to believe that Sinnoh and Kalos are damn near our allies-" I began.

"-And all of that could change in tangent with one nation's regime." Captain Lewis cut me off in a weary voice, as a severe look settled in her cold eyes.

I went dead silent. Captain Lewis continued to stare at me for a moment, before her eyes joined mine on the front, and she murmured one last piece of dreadful advice.

"You really need to look this shit up, Zane. You're travelling alongside the possibility of another war..." Captain Lewis informed me with a quiet voice.

Okay…

Now I was _really_ regretting my haunted company.

And that cold fear writhing in my gut was catering to the overt warning relayed in the Commander in Chief's paranoia inducing lecture.

…

As soon as the Commander in Chief had finished his formal drivel, the order was given for every uniform in attendance to return to their posts.

But as far as the two Berets were concerned…

-The Rangers don't answer to the Military, unless a joint forces deployment is ordained by Indigo's Congress.

While the Skinheads marched out of the yard in formation, the two lonely Berets went against the uniformed horde on route with the courtyard's highest loft. I knew where Captain Lewis was leading me to…

-Cause I could see him from the courtyard center.

He's pretty hard to miss. Even when he's surrounded by APUs, he'll still tower over all the Military's bulky armor by a solid head and shoulders.

-Lt. Jackie Surge.

Vermilion's local idol, and the Hero of Kanto.

Captain Lewis didn't even pause in her stride when the APUs formed a defensive perimeter around the loft, intent on dissuading any encroachers away from the Military's Supreme Commanders with an intimidating display of force.

I came up short when those huge fucking autocannons aligned on my person, but Captain Lewis walked right up to the gun barrels without even looking at the metal coated suckers behind them.

"Get out of my way, tinman." A pissy Blackhat growled when an armored gauntlet rose to push her away.

"Holy shit… Lou?! Is that you?!" One _big,_ blonde, muscular behemoth parted the metal wall on an awestruck interception with my CO.

"It's been awhile, Hugh." Captain Lewis still sounded cold as hell when she addressed her old commander.

"Holy shit! Bugger the fuck off you clowns! You just about riled up the meanest broad in a uniform!" Lt. Surge clapped his ham sized hands together and fist pumped with a guffaw when he dismissed his personal entourage of APUs.

"Ol' fucking Lou!" Lt. Surge greeted Captain Lewis in the most incomprehensible manner imaginable. That giant galoot wrapped both of his tree trunk thick arms around my CO, and lifted her off her feet in a whirling bear hug.

"Why didn't you come sooner, you old bag?!" Lt. Surge cried out in joy as he fondly crushed Captain Lewis in his arms.

-Not the greeting that I would have been expecting.

"Put me down, Lieutenant. _Now_." Captain Lewis's muffled voice growled from Lt. Surge's collar.

"I missed you too... You cold hearted bitch." Lt. Surge laughed as he dropped Captain Lewis back onto her feet.

It was quite a distance to fall from. Captain Lewis looked like a Goddamn doll being squashed in those huge fucking arms.

"Been keeping well, I hope?" Captain Lewis grumbled as she straightened out her uniform.

"I feel like absolute shit. Thanks for asking." Lt. Surge chuckled, ruffing up Captain Lewis's black beret with his monster of a hand.

"Just do yourself a favor and croak already, Hugh." Captain Lewis muttered.

"Shit. I missed that heartfelt sympathy of yours too." Lt. Surge guffawed, shaking his watermelon sized head with a smile.

"And who is this cute little fella?!" Lt. Surge took note of me, and made towards my location with both of his arms spread wide in welcome.

"Stand down, big guy. I don't hug Rhydons." I damn near took a step back when those colossal arms started to fall around my person.

"If you break my subordinate, Hugh… You and I are gonna develop some _new_ problems." Captain Lewis added from the background.

"Aww… Is he delicate?" Lt. Surge mockingly fauned over me.

I decide to make the fourth stupidest move of my life right then and there.

"Lieutenant Zane Bastard of the Ranger Corps." I extended my hand to Lt. Surge in a dignified greeting. I knew damn well what was going to happen to my offered limb when I did so too.

" _Lieutenant_ Bastard, huh? Last I heard, you was just a Warrant Officer…" Lt. Surge sounded amiable enough, as he proceeded to destroy my arm in the most brutal handshake that I have ever received.

"Times change, Lieutenant Surge…" I kept a smirk plastered firmly on my face as the giant opposed to me did his damnedest to break my arm without snapping bone.

"Yeah, they do. They most certainly do…" Lt. Surge murmured as he released my forearm and digits from his agonizing grip.

"...Are you two finished comparing dicks yet?" Captain Lewis growled after an extended silence had passed between Lt. Surge's and my staring contest.

"Not until I get that Badge." My nasty grin worked its way up to my ears, yet I refused to break ocular contact or bat an eyelash. Lt. Surge responded in kind, as his own evil fucking grin split his huge face in toothy halves.

"Shit. That means I'll be an old man in the grave before we resolve this then." Lt. Surge replied.

"So are you ladies just gonna stand there, staring all longingly into each other's eyes for the rest of the day?" Captain Lewis grumbled.

-That line ended the pissing contest.

"Heh. He's just as dumb as I thought he be." Lt. Surge tossed in his two Sandz with an approving look in his eye.

"And I thought that you'd be bigger. Guess we'll both have to live with the disappointment." I retorted. Lt. Surge just chuckled.

"Well enough about you, purty boy. How the hell have you been, Lou?!" Lt. Surge never missed a fucking beat. That asshole turned his back on me as though everything that had just transpired between us was nothing more than an uninteresting formality.

"Been better myself, Hugh. Thanks for asking." Captain Lewis grunted.

"The bush monkeys been keeping you busy?" Lt. Surge's voice softened everso slightly, while my back stiffened up nice and tight.

- _The Greenbacks are NOT Bush Monkeys. Period. The. Mother. Fucking. End._

"No more than usual. You mind if we ditch the public setting?" Captain Lewis asked.

"Do we have to bring Lieutenant Scrub with us?" Lt. Surge sounded annoyed when he mentioned yours truly.

"He's part of it, Hugh. Yeah, we're bringing Lieutenant Scrub too." Captain Lewis replied.

"Bush Monkey Scrub, reporting for duty, sirs." I growled to both my Blackhat CO and Kanto's biggest War Hero.

"Angsty little fucker, ain't he?" Lt. Surge was shooting me a sour look.

"Don't fuck with him, Hugh. He's dumber than he looks." Captain Lewis warned.

-Thank you, Captain Lewis.

"Shit. And I was already hating his guts. Come on Lou, I'll take you and Lieutenant Scrub to a private location." Lt. Surge grumbled, as he waved to the two berets in his shadow, indicating that we were to follow him as he plodded his bulk off towards the civilian sector.

…

"Don't tell me that you're still only drinking orange juice, girl." Lt. Surge grunted when he sat down at the bar's innermost table.

"With a sprig of wintergreen." Captain Lewis grudgingly replied.

"What would you do if I snuck some vermouth into your orange juice?" Lt. Surge grinned at my CO. Captain Lewis fixed him with the coldest eyes that I'd ever seen on a human face, before she coolly offered her old CO an icy response.

"...What happened the last time you tried that, Hugh?" Captain Lewis growled.

"Oh, I haven't forgotten. I still have nightmares about that night." Lt. Surge shuddered with a smile.

The bartender himself came down from his roost to take our orders. The atypical service must have had something to do with the local celebrity sitting at our table.

"The usual, Ted." Lt. Surge grunted to the bartender.

"An orange juice." Captain Lewis muttered.

"Your peatiest of whiskies, keep it off the rocks." I said, looking over at our host.

Lt. Surge was eying me oddly, as the bartender took off to fill our drinks.

"...So who told you that was my favorite drink?" Lt. Surge asked in a dark voice. I quirked an eyebrow at the Lightning American.

"That was the first legal drink I shared with my Viridian Colonel. That's my favorite drink. You had nothing to do with it." I replied in an irritated tone. Lt. Surge just kept staring at me, though this wasn't another one of his ocular challenges.

Hewitt Jackson was trying to figure me out.

"Ted seems to be doing well." Captain Lewis commented, breaking off Lt. Surge's pensive gaze.

"Yeah, that old bastard has done pretty well for himself. Better than most of our old platoon." Lt. Surge chuckled. Captain Lewis leaned back into her booth.

"So how many of us are left?" Captain Lewis asked. Lt. Surge just snorted.

"Why don't you write us all a letter sometime, Lou? Hell, after the shit we went through together, the least you could do is let us all know that you're still alive." Lt. Surge chuckled.

"...I didn't think that they'd want to hear from me." Captain Lewis answered in a quiet voice.

"Why the hell wouldn't they?" Lt. Surge quirked a brow over towards Captain Lewis, while a bemused smile lifted his lips.

"Well, I did walk out on you all-" Captain Lewis began. Lt. Surge sputtered his laughter at Captain Lewis's self conscious remark.

"Yeah, the whole gang walked out on me, Lou. I was the only one dumb enough to keep running with the Boomshanks. Everyone else wisened up and bailed on the suicide detail as soon as an opportunity presented itself. Nobody begrudges you for signing on with the Railbore Division, girl. Least of all me." Lt. Surge settled back into the booth beside Captain Lewis, as the bartender returned to our table with the drinks.

"...So that's why I haven't heard a whisper from you in… Oh, what has it been now?" Lt. Surge muttered pensively.

"...Thirty years." Captain Lewis whispered. Lt. Surge snorted again and shook his blond head.

"Twenty-seven. I remember getting a letter from you when the slant eyes sent me back home." Lt. Surge smiled softly. Captain Lewis started shrinking even further into the booth.

"...I forgot about that letter…" Captain Lewis murmured.

"Heh. I read your poem every morning. Helps remind me that the war is over…" Lt. Surge's voice trembled ever so slightly near the end.

"...I heard that Chester was released from the institute." Captain Lewis was trying to change the topic, but she seemed hesitant to name her old squad mates. Or maybe she feared to learn of their fates.

"Yeah, I got in contact with him the instant the news reached me. Offered him a job. Wanted to help him get back on his feet. But I should've known better. There's just too many foul memories here in Vermilion to warrant him risking another breakdown…" Lt. Surge muttered.

"Rodriguez?" Captain Lewis asked.

"Committed suicide eight years ago. Called me up two days before he pulled the trigger on himself. Had a fucking normal conversation with me. Not one hint of what he was planning to do. Fucking asshole should've gotten some help, if he couldn't have talked to me about it..." Lt. Surge cleared his voice, stowing some volatile emotion that threaten to rise from his memories.

"Sanders?" Captain Lewis continued.

"Sent me a picture of his second granddaughter just a month ago. He's doing well. Married that girl he hooked up with in Viridian on our platoon's first winter leave. They've been together ever since the war ended. Had four children. All of them are married and outta the homestead now. He's proud as punch of them all too." Lt. Surge smiled fondly, his distant eyes warming with some small joy.

"Kristie?" Captain Lewis asked. Lt. Surge sighed.

"She don't talk with me either. Can't blame her at all. That girl was never cut out for the inhumane shit that we use to pull on a daily basis. Nope. Kristie doesn't want anything to do with you, me, or the Military ever again." Lt. Surge breathed out.

"Emmets?" Captain Lewis asked.

"Dead. Heart attack got that tough sumbitch three years ago. Of all the Goddamn shit to take out our old Tower of Emmets, it had to be a fucking heart attack." Lt. Surge grunted, taking the first lick of his scotch.

"...I don't know if I want to hear about what happened to the rest…" Captain Lewis whispered. Lt. Surge put his scotch down on the table, and stared at the whirling gold liquor in his glass.

"...So what do I tell them about you, Lou?" Lt. Surge asked in a soft voice. Captain Lewis stared off into the empty space above my left shoulder. Those eyes never wavered as their light dimmed, and the indestructible Blackhat between them began to fall into herself, as she sought an answer worthy of her every friend.

"...Just tell them that I'm fine." Captain Lewis murmured. Lt. Surge clapped a massive hand against his brow, and began to massage his eyes with a forefinger and thumb.

"No one is gonna believe it, Lou. Especially not me." Lt. Surge's voice dipped low. The old soldier sighed, and repositioned both of his overlapping hands beneath his leaning chin as he stared across the table at yours truly.

"...So what does Sparky over here have to do with all this?" Lt. Surge was eying me something suspiciously.

I was perfectly silent. I was perfectly still. I couldn't believe that this personal exchange had just transpired before me.

-I wasn't supposed to be sitting here, listening to these two Veterans, as they spoke of their dear brothers in arms and of the fates that had separated them.

I wasn't a part of the history that tied these two people so closely together, and seeing that inextricable bond reaffirmed in all of its subtle familiarity filled me with an overwhelming sense of profanity.

"...Lieutenant Bastard has served under my command for… How many months has it been now, Zane?" Captain Lewis was still using that soft tone when she addressed me.

"A little over three months." I whispered. Captain Lewis sighed, and lowered her eyes.

"I've seen him… Well, I saw the aftermath of him taking on a Snorlax with nothing more than a knife. I watched this kid fight off a Venomoth induced lung infection when he had only half a lung left. I've seen this little turd throw everything he had on the table for a handful of soldiers twice now. I've seen what happens when his gamble succeeds. I've seen what happens when it fails. And I've seen him struggle like hell to move on from the rough times…" Captain Lewis's voice faded, and I was left frozen numb in my booth, unable to blink or even turn my head away from the Blackhat sitting across from me.

"You're not gonna like this, Hugh… You're not gonna like this at all… But I think that I found the Ranger's version of you." Captain Lewis whispered.

I couldn't have felt anymore shocked if Lt. Surge had decided to follow up Captain Lewis's remark by tazing me.

-How the hell could Captain Lewis compare me to _him?!_

Lt. Surge's dead eyes were fixed on me. He wasn't moving either. I'd never felt so small in my life, standing beneath this giant's measured gaze.

"Everybody, clear out. Finish your drinks fast and take the party elsewhere. This bar is closing up for the day." Lt. Surge announced to the other patrons. A clicking of heels sounded in a chorus, as the attending squads of servicemen raised their salutes to Kanto's Hero.

"Yes sir, Lieutenant Surge!" A Goddamn Lt. Colonel adhered the order of a lowly Lieutenant, and marshalled his regiment into the task of ushering the civis out.

"Ted, would you mind taking inventory now? I'll hold down the bar, and you can head out as soon as you're finished in the cellar. Don't worry about the cleanup. I'll take care of it." Lt. Surge turned to the bartender with this address, who readily whipped the towel off his shoulder, and dropped it on the counter.

"Sure thing, Hugh. You give me a call when your guests head out. I'll come back to help you with the upkeep." The bartender was a veteran soldier alright. You could see it in the poise that Ted assumed when he addressed his former CO. The crowd slowly meandered out of the bar and into the streets, while Ted headed over towards a door marked for Employees Only.

"By the way, Lou… It was good to see you again." Ted smiled over his shoulder at my Captain, before popping open the backroom and making his way past the threshold.

"It was good to see you again too, Ted." Captain Lewis found a measure of strength to reinforce her voice when she addressed her old squadmate, right before Ted closed the door on the now silent bar.

"Now…" Lt. Surge clapped his hands together as his solemn self rose from the booth.

"...What can I get you lot to drink? And Lou, if you say another Goddamn orange juice, so help me now, I will spike the living shit out it." Lt. Surge casually announced.

"...I'll have a brandy." Captain Lewis murmured in an undertone.

"Kid, what are you having?" Lt. Surge looked right at me when he asked that question.

It was gonna take a moment for me to answer. I was still rolling from both the blasphemy and shock of Captain Lewis's insinuation.

"...Gin and tonic. With ice and lime." I finally managed.

"Righto. Be right back." Lt. Surge grunted, as he headed off towards the bar.

"...Do you commandeer every bar like this?" I asked, when my breath had finally returned. Lt. Surge looked pretty busy slicing limes for my gin and tonic, but the motherfucker knew how to whip out a drink lickety-split.

"I probably could. Never tried commandeering a bar before." Lt. Surge dropped the ice cubes into a pair of glasses, and topped the lime off with a sprig of wintergreen.

"But this-?" I began, as Lt. Surge returned to our table with a brandy and a pair of tonics.

"-This? This is my bar." Lt. Surge cut me off with a cocky smile.

"I like to think of it as my retirement home. Should my retirement ever be authorized by the Commander and Chief, that is." Lt. Surge chuckled, passing Captain Lewis her brandy, before sliding me my tonic.

"You like the harsh drinks, don't you kid?" Lt. Surge asked with a friendly smile, as he sipped from his own gin and tonic.

"He just likes his liquor. It doesn't matter if it's cheap or if it's harsh." Captain Lewis decided that she could answer for me.

"Shit… Lou, why can't you ever find any respectable people to call friends?" Lt. Surge laughed.

"I can't stand respectable people." Captain Lewis grunted. Lt. Surge just snorted.

"Well, that explains why you joined the Ranger Corps… You had me damn well worried when I found out about you jumping out of one war and straight into another." Lt. Surge started to mellow out again. Even so, he was only sounding slightly serious when he referenced Captain Lewis's career choice.

"You know that I don't like to talk about it, Hugh…" Captain Lewis murmured. Lt. Surge just sighed.

"I know that you don't. But Walter was a good kid. He wouldn't have approved of his sister trying to kill herself over something stupid either." Lt. Surge grumbled.

"Leave it be, Hugh…" Captain Lewis's voice was breaking, and my watering eye found the bubbles in my tonic the single most interesting thing to stare down at.

"...You still won't get it off your chest, will you Lou?" Lt. Surge spoke in an undertone. There was a long and heavy pause, before my Captain finally saw fit to answer her old CO.

"...Just leave it be."

Lt. Surge was staring at the bubbles in his tonic too, as he lifted the glass to eye level.

"...Well… So much for that…" Lt. Surge sighed, before throwing back his head, and tossing the drink down his throat.

"...Do we have to talk about the kid?" Lt. Surge grumbled, going back to his scotch.

"I know that you don't like talking about yourself, Hugh… But I think you could get through to Zane. He's not too far off from where you are now." Captain Lewis murmured. A rumbling breath formed in Lt. Surge's throat, as exasperation drove my host to patience's end.

"Okay. Want my advice, kid?" Lt. Surge leaned over the table towards me. I swallowed when those fierce eyes locked on mine.

"...Get out of the Corps _now_. You did your service. You gave them more than they deserved. Now go home and make a life for yourself, before your fucking High Command chains you to their fucked up political games." Lt. Surge growled in my face.

"He's already there, Hugh. I meant advice on how to deal with it." Captain Lewis didn't sound any more joyous than her former CO when she spoke up again. Lt. Surge threw his hands in the air, and shook his head despondently.

"Why in the name of God almighty… Do we keep putting kids on chessboards?" Lt. Surge sounded furious.

-And I was feeling absolutely terrified.

"How much did you give them, Zane? How much have you lost fighting for their cause?" Lt. Surge was losing it. Practiced civility was the only thing holding him back from destroying his own bar.

"...Nothing that I wasn't willing to part with." I growled.

Lt. Surge laughed in my face.

"Right… Let's see here…" Lt. Surge cut his cackles short, and dug a crumpled sheet of paper out of his digital camo BDU's vest pocket.

"Service tag: W-2110573. Field technician, combat engineer, special operative, yadah, yadah, yadah…" Lt. Surge was reciting a copy of my service record. Go figure the Military would have given him his homework to do in regards to our upcoming Gym Battle.

"Oh here it is. Just what I was looking for. Your medical manifest." Lt. Surge smiled oh-so-pleasantly at me, before his disgust twisted that smirk into an angry grimace.

"Your left eye? Naw, you're right. You don't need that. Your fucking lungs? Ouch. Hope you don't play sports. Holy fuck. All these surgeries on your arms? Aw, that's probably nothing. I'm sure your doctors were just being thorough. Oh, but this bit about your legs?" Lt. Surge nodded his head as an impressed expression stretched out the lines of his face.

"Well fuck me… Your legs are almost as fucked up as mine are." Lt. Surge shoved my service record back into his vest pocket, and flung his massive left boot onto the bar table, before he pulled back the elevated pant leg.

There wasn't a scarred up calf beneath that garment. There wasn't a muscular extension of this freak's powerful body.

-There wasn't even a leg.

There was only the exposed mechanical skeleton of a replacement prosthetic.

"And the other boot matches. Just like yours." Lt. Surge smiled down at the artificial limb with all of his loathing just simmering behind the eyes.

"...Know how I got that, Zane?" Lt. Surge was still glaring at his prosthetic when that dangerous voice lashed out at my ears.

"...A jump gone foul?" I dared to whisper. Lt. Surge snorted.

"Naw… naw, this was a little memento that my hosts in Johto left me with, after they gunned down my bird and tortured me for three years straight." Lt. Surge spat, rolling down his pant leg and pulling his boot off the table.

"They weren't too happy with me after my unit fucked up their stupid-ass Imperial Storm. They weren't too fucking happy with me at all. And when they offered my ransom to the Military Governors of Vermilion… The same bastards that I'd served so faithfully for so many hellish years of my life…" Lt. Surge's voice was shaking now.

"The Commander and Chief got on a private line with the Emperor of Johto… and then my boss told the Emperor to take his worthless little ransom, and shove it where the sun don't shine." Lt. Surge's fists hit the table, and the polished wooden platform split right in half.

"So the Emperor decided to have my legs removed, just to ensure that I would never be able to jump from a Skarmory's backside again." Lt. Surge hissed, as he glared down at the shattered ruin of our table.

"They knew you were alive before-?!" I began. Lt. Surge cut me off by ripping our table right out of the bolts that bound it to the cement floor, before he hurled that heavy oak and steel table into the bar's pristine liquor shelf.

"OF COURSE THEY FUCKING KNEW! I'D DONE MY PART! I FUCKING SAVED THEIR SHITTY LITTLE MOUNTAIN! THEY DIDN'T NEED ME ANYMORE!" Lt. Surge screamed loud enough to rattle the glass shards that were now strewn across the bar floor.

"...They didn't want to pay the price… The League was starting to sway people over to their idea of peace, and Johto's costly Imperial Storm meant that we'd just about won the fucking war. The Military did everything they could to drum up the people's hatred, they even used me and my lie of a death to get the people of Kanto riled up, just so that they could get the support they needed to finish the war…" Lt. Surge was gasping now, and I was staring in horror as he recounted the hidden history of my nation.

This couldn't be true.

There was no way that this was true! The Military was obligated to negotiate for the release of their imprisoned soldiers-!

 _...Just like the Ranger Corps was obligated to inform their members of a death in the family._

...It was true.

I knew that it was true, beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Lt. Surge and I were both pawns who had been played for fools.

"...And it didn't work. The League won, and the Military Governors lost. So they left me to rot in Johto. They handed me over to our enemies, and told them to do whatever they wanted to do to me. All because the Military had pronounced me dead, and they didn't want anyone to find out that it was a lie." Lt. Surge choked out between panting breaths.

"...So you want my advice, Zane? Now that you're in too deep?" Lt. Surge murmured as he wrestled his tumultuous emotions back under control.

"When they stab you in the back, don't you fucking dare hope for a miracle. That hope will just make you linger on in agony, before your miracle puts a chain around your neck..." Lt. Surge mopped the tears from his eyes with a bar towel, and fought back the sobs as he collapsed over the bar's counter.

I couldn't move.

I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't even think.

-Nothing.

Absolutely nothing…

Not my father. Not the Snorlax. Not even TH…

...Had frightened me as much as Lt. Surge's advice did.

A shadow moved out of the corner of my numb eye. One black shadow with a tight knot of graying auburn hair.

One silent Blackhat Captain.

My Blackhat Captain.

She left her inconspicuous position in the booth, and moved towards her sobbing CO.

My Captain approached Lt. Surge ever so quietly…

...Before she raised a steady hand…

...And laid it on her friend's shoulder.

With a desperate and shaken reflex, Lt. Surge put his own giant hand over Captain Lewis's. And he held on to her hand, as if it were the only thing keeping him from falling down…

...Then the Hero of Kanto began to weep, as he succumbed to both his bitterness and those horrid living memories.

…

We cleaned up the bar as best as we could. Captain Lewis headed off to find a broom and mop shortly after Lt. Surge had sat down. She didn't even have to hand me a bucket. I was right beside her, sweeping up the broken glass and mopping up the spilled alcohol. We worked in complete silence, adhering to the same disciplined hygienic code that had first been enforced in our basic training.

Only when the the last of the heavy debris had been positioned in the back, and every bar table had been wiped clean, would my Captain return to her static friend.

The Hero of Kanto was sitting at a table near the bar's front, eyes staring past the plaster wall just four meters away from his person.

He'd been sitting like that for the last hour, never moving or making a sound. Just staring through the wall. Lost in whatever hell still lingered behind his eyes.

"...Hugh?" Captain Lewis softly spoke his name as she took a seat beside him.

Lt. Surge didn't respond, nor show any sign that he'd heard her.

Captain Lewis just sat there beside him, as the minutes continued to tick by without any indication of change.

Finally, when it became clear that her friend wasn't going to snap out of it anytime soon, Captain Lewis sighed softly, before she leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on Lt. Surge's right cheek.

"...I'll call you later, Hugh. Take care of yourself." Captain Lewis whispered, as she stroked his shoulder.

Then Captain Lewis lifted herself from the seat beside him, and left the bar without even taking notice of the silent Beret following her.

We walked further down Vermilion's streets, side by side, as the sun began its afternoon descent towards the horizon. Our walk was as silent as a memorial service, right up until...

"Zane…"

I came to a dead stop when Captain Lewis addressed me in that reserved tone.

"Cap'n?" I pressed, keeping my voice steady. Captain Lewis drew a heavy breath through her nares, and looked up at the sky with a sigh.

"...Now you know."

I fell against a wall for support. I couldn't even begin to comprehend what this revelation meant for my own future.

"...So what do I do?" I asked, my voice shaking with anxiety. Captain Lewis sighed again, and turned to me as a straight line dictated the contours of her mouth.

"You overcome, Zane. You face it head on. And you win." Captain Lewis said it casually, as if such advice was on par with bicycling instructions.

"...There's more to his story, ain't there?" I asked, drawing a shuddering breath. Captain Lewis closed her eyes, and when she spoke, her cautious tone was accompanied by a reserved air.

"...The torture didn't end when Johto returned him to Kanto. Hugh had to fight a whole new war when he came back home… And he's still fighting that war." Captain Lewis whispered.

"I take it that I'm sworn to secrecy now? About what really happened to Hewitt Jackson?" I asked in a cheerless voice. Captain Lewis nodded slowly.

"Consider it a top secret disclosure, Special Operative. Which brings us to the next detail…" Captain Lewis sighed.

"Let me guess… ACE?" I chanced a guess with a demeaning smile. Captain Lewis tilted her head in the onset of another stiff nod.

"Your new boss only recently decrypted and reconfigured Alexandria's Distortion addled transmission. He knows about your dinner with Theron tonight. Stay alert for an incoming hail on your Tact. Pad. Looker is going to want to talk to you about something important." Captain Lewis muttered.

"Great… What does he want me to do? Poison TH's coffee?" I shook my head in weary exasperation. Captain Lewis cleared her throat, and shifted through her kit for a moment, before she removed a pair of humble brown folders from her stash.

"On a more personal note, I thought that this might interest you." Captain Lewis handed me the first folder with a soft inflection to her voice. I split open the document, and perused the single sheet of paper within.

"...She moved to Celedon?" I asked, my voice growing faint. Captain Lewis nodded again, before adding some as of yet unread material.

"She was accepted for a job in Celedon. A job far more befitting of her education than the midnight management of a Pokemart." Captain Lewis replied.

"...So she's still running…" I whispered, my voice going hoarse with emotion.

"Read in between the lines, Ranger. She applied to the job under her own name." Captain Lewis berated me for my hopeless admission.

"Melissa isn't running anymore, Zane. She's finally trying to pick up the pieces. You might actually have had something to do with that." Captain Lewis murmured. I snapped the folder shut with a shuddering intake of breath.

"Do you know anything else? How she's managing?" I asked, a hint of desperation betrayed in my voice. Captain Lewis fixed me with a hard eye.

"She still hates the Rangers, and wants absolutely nothing to do with them. Melissa slammed the door in mine and Lt. Col Rionaldo's faces before we could even introduce ourselves. But I think that fiery girl will do just fine for herself. She's a strong-willed individual. You shouldn't worry about Melissa." Captain Lewis took the the folder back from me, but hesitated to hand me the second sealed document.

"...But you do need to think long and hard about this one, Zane… think long and hard before you go and throw it to the wind…" Captain Lewis whispered as she reluctantly released the second document to my awaiting person.

I cracked open that file, and the muscles of my neck started tightening up no sooner than I had read the heading sentence.

"What the hell made you think that I wanted to see this?" I hissed, as my teeth clenched together in fury.

"...Because he's your father, Zane… And because he's the only family that you have left."

If anyone other than Captain Lewis had spoken those words to me, then I would have flung that file right back into their face. But this woman knew what family was to people like us.

...And this woman knew what it was like to never see that family again.

"...Looks like he's still doing well with his career. Got himself another promotion. So what does that make him now? Silph's Financial Director?" I asked, the livid tone in my voice did nothing to hide the snide inflection that accompanied it.

"He's been taking a lot of time off work, Zane. And he has been consistently for the last six months..." Captain Lewis whispered.

"Why should I care?!" I spat, crumbling up that folder and the document within it into a tight little paper ball.

"...Because, Zane… He learned about what happened to you. And no disappointed father stays rooted in his ways when his son almost dies." Captain Lewis answered in a soft voice.

"Then why hasn't he called me? Why didn't he tell me about my mother? Why hasn't he been a father to his nearly dead son?" My voice was rank with venom, and specks of spittle led the winds of my vocal hatred.

"...Probably because he's in the same straights that you are, Zane… He just doesn't know how to apologize-"

"-That's enough!"

I was an angry inch away from my superior's nose. I was glaring passionate murder at a woman who could have broken me in half with reflexive ease.

I was right in Captain Lewis's grill, ready to fight to the death, just to keep her evil mouth shut.

"...Don't cut him out, Zane. Don't push him away. You don't know what regret is until it's too late." Captain Lewis's tone never changed from its soft track. Those tender eyes of hers kept right on staring into my hellish gaze.

"...Enough." I growled in a decisive warning.

That was final. I didn't want talk about it. There was no way in hell that I was gonna continue listening to this bullshit.

I.

Don't.

Have.

 _A father._

- _He_ told me so himself.

Captain Lewis closed her eyes, and took a step back away from me.

"Alright, Zane… If that's how you want it to be."

Captain Lewis sighed as she drew a Heavy Ball from her belt, and proceeded to release its occupant right into the center of Vermilion's Main.

"Solomon, let's get back to Cerulean. We're done here." Captain Lewis had located her Blackhat voice at last, as she pulled herself up onto her Wyrm's bare rostrum, and settled in for the long flight home.

"Take care of yourself, Ranger. We'll be keeping an eye on you." Captain Lewis addressed me in that cold tone. I mustered a stiff salute, and fell back against the city's commercial walls as Solomon flared his mighty sails for take off.

"Keep right on watching, Cap'n. Because before too long, it's gonna be Darwin and me keeping an eye on you." Zane Bastard's smug voice shouted out.

Just before that giant snake whipped itself off Vermilion's tarmac with a rumbling roar, I swear that I saw the barest hint of a smile lifting the corners of my Captain's lips.

…

The buzzing in my breast pocket couldn't have come at a more innappropriate moment.

"Goddamnit." I spat, adjusting Mac's heavy nursing unit for one-handed redeployment.

"Don't get greedy, asshole…" I growled at my nursing Munchlax, as he once more attempted to wrestle the rubber teat from my hand.

" _Lieutenant_ Bastard reporting in." I growled into my Tact. Pad, after I had fished it out of my coat pocket.

Vice-Marshal Looker caught the hint.

"Is your present location secure?" The ACE Executive asked me. I just snorted.

"It's just me and Mac here, Colonel. But company could show up at any minute." I kept my tone casual, as I relayed the requested information.

"Acceptable. Should we be interrupted, I'd suggest using your upcoming Gym Battle as a diversionary conversation. Everything else discussed on this line is to be considered top secret." Vice-Marshal Looker was quick to provide a stratagem.

"So to what pleasure do I owe this call, Colonel?" My tone was anything but pleasant, as I once again adopted TH's mannerisms for my address.

"Your engagement with Theron Halcyon tonight presents us with an opportunity to discern a specific motive of his. A motive that we have been attempting to determine ever since the Pewter City incident." The Vice-Marshal began.

"So you want to know if he's going to continue competing in Indigo League?" I asked, adjusting the Tact. Pad's support to my shoulder, as I violently dragged the the supplemental feeding system out of Mac's desperate grasp.

"No, nothing quite so trivial. We are attempting to determine Theron Halcyon's intended diplomatic policy in regards to the Indigo Confederacy." Vice-Marshal Looker corrected me.

I went stiff against Mac's incessant tugging.

"...What do you mean by that?" I asked in a guarded tone. Vice-Marshal Looker sighed in exasperation.

"We need to know if Theron Halcyon presents us with an ally or an enemy in his ascent to the Kalosian Throne." Vice-Marshal Looker explained.

I was completely silent on my end.

"...Agent Bastard? Have we lost transmission?" Vice-Marshal Looker asked.

"No, I heard you. I'm just struggling to believe that TH could somehow turn the Concordant against Indigo." I responded, shoving Mac away from the artificial teat, and flipping the kill switch on his nursing pump.

"Anything is possible in regards to Theron's influence on the Concordant. Particularly if he and Fuhrer Adler should succeed in Unova's inclusion-"

"-WHAT?!" I cried out in shock, as I dropped the tangle of infeed tubes that I had been wrangling away from the inquisitive Mac.

"...Fuhrer Adler and Theron Halcyon have been colluding together for quite some time now. Though the contents of their private meetings have only recently surfaced, it seems that the pair are aiming for a third nation's union within the Concordant." Vice-Marshal Looker gave me the most damning piece news that I'd heard yet of TH's political agenda.

"How the hell did that even get off the ground?! Kalos and Sinnoh _hate_ Unova!" I was struggling to keep my volume under control. This sounded fucking fictional-

"-You are simply underestimating Theron Halcyon's political prowess. While many in the Concordant are revolted by such an alliance, Theron Halcyon's portrayal of a united hemisphere and the potential peace it offers is simply too tantalizing an allure for either nation to ignore." Vice-Marshal Looker explained.

"-What?!" I still couldn't wrap my head around an alliance between Unova and the Concordant. They'd been fighting with one another ever since the Blackout Act-

"If a lasting union was forged between Unova and the Concordant, it would bequeath the participants of such a union with an era of peace that no soul indigenous to those three nations could otherwise dream of." Vice-Marshal Looker explained.

"But how is that even possible-!?"

Vice-Marshal Looker groaned. Explaining potential political shifts in foreign nations was not an intended context of this call.

"Fuhrer Adler is not a fool. He understands that his rule of Unova is doomed to end in violence. Unova's every regime has always been succeeded by bloodshed. Fuhrer Adler wishes to stabilize his governing powers, and maintain his rule long beyond the predictable boundaries of his nation's tolerance. He cannot rely upon his traitorous governing council for that end. For that end, Fuhrer Adler requires an ally outside of Unova. An ally with sufficient influence to placate Unova's violent culture." Vice-Marshal Looker provided me the missing details I needed to comprehend this dilemma.

"Theron Halcyon is the only foreign ally willing to consider the Fuhrer's plight. And he is the only ally with both the personal history and the political prowess required to endure himself to the people of Unova." Vice-Marshal Looker abridged the complexities between such a maneuver with that one simplified statement.

"So Unova becoming a part of the Concordant is a possibility?" I whispered, completely numb to the big dumb and blind animal sniffing around my shoulders.

"A distinct possibility. Should Theron Halcyon continue pressuring the governors of Sinnoh with their own populace-"

"-WHAT?!"

TH had attacked Sinnoh. TH had _slaughtered_ Sinnoh's Parliament in cold blood. And then TH had gone ahead and pissed all over Sinnoh's most sacred landmark just for the sake of spite.

 _-And now the common man of Sinnoh supported him?!_

"I was led to believe that you were an educated individual, Agent Bastard. I have a list of your academic credentials that now warrants suspect due to your nearly intolerable ignorance. Must I explain every modern political engine to you?" Vice-Marshal Looker grumbled.

"I've been living in the bush for the last three years, risking my ass on the frontlines so that other people don't have to. Personal priorities change in the face of constant warfare. So give me a fucking break about my lackluster knowledge of modern politics." I growled over Vice-Marshal Looker's patronizing sigh.

"...Very well. As you know, Theron completely decimated Sinnoh's central government, when he retaliated to their last attempt against his life. Since that globally acknowledged illustration of retribution, Sinnoh has restructured their Theocratic Parliament to reflect the governing system of the old. And despite this new Parliament's outspoken verdict of devilry against him, Theron Halcyon and his supporters in Kalos have endeavored to reshape Sinnoh's domestic perception of him into a far more favorable image." Vice-Marshal Looker began.

"Theron Halcyon _is_ an usual situation. In Kalos, he possess nigh absolute power, and yet as an exile of the Crown, he has little reason to adhere to any of Kalos's laws. In short, Theron Halcyon is very much a Rogue King. Ruling House Arturia and their supporters cannot afford to make any overt moves against Theron himself. Doing so could result in a civil war, as Theron possess his own vast array of supporters." Vice-Marshal Looker paused for a second, and given his following slurp and contented sigh: I was left to assume that my Vice-Marshal was imbibing his evening coffee.

"More than half of Kalos's Noble Houses have pledged their support to House Halcyon, and a staggering seventy-three percent of the common populace has also rallied to the Halcyon's claim. This has engendered a unique position, where Theron practically rules Kalos in everything but title. However, because the acknowledged King of Kalos has revoked Theron Halcyon's seat upon the Royal Court in an effort to deny him a station recognized by foreign powers, Theron does not owe any loyalty to the foreign arrangements established by the current Crown." Vice-Marshal Looker continued.

"This means that Theron Halcyon and his supporters can operate as a separate government in Kalos. They are beholden to none of the international trade agreements that would restrict the current Crown from investing their capital where they see fit. And if Theron has revealed one skill in his sudden ascent into politics: it is his mastery of undermining established authorities." I hadn't finished feeding Mac yet, and the anxious fat fuck knew it. I just about had to put Vice-Marshal Looker on hold in order to remind Mac of what happened when he pissed Momma Zane off.

"One of the first Noble Houses who pledged themselves to Theron's cause was House Le-Faye, whom have served the Kalos Crown as the Noble Family of the Treasury for nearly a millennia. This afforded Theron Halcyon with the vast resources of Kalos's banking industry, and the Eidolon King proved himself rather clever when it came time to mend personal relations with the people of Sinnoh." That final line brought a pause to Mac's likely beating. Switching the nursing system back on, I jammed the rubber teat in Mac's face and just let the pudgy dumbass have at it.

"Forgoing the standard diplomatic approach of making direct reparations towards the restructuring central Government: Theron chose instead to invest Kalos's assets into the lowest tier of Sinnoh's private sector. Specifically in the form of small businesses and domestic aid." Now I was all ears, as I was far more interested in Vice-Marshal Looker's political spiel than I was in Mac's current dilemma. The dumb fucking Munchlax had tangled himself up in the infeed tubes, and Mac was too stupid to realize that he was strangling himself everytime he tried to suckle from the formula-providing nipple.

"It was an unprecedented political maneuver, but in spite of the Sinnoh Government's sluggish return to power, Sinnoh's economy practically exploded with its newfound support from Kalos's financiers. Following the resurgence of Sinnoh's markets were even more third-party interests, such as foreign investors from both Indigo and Hoenn. The end result was the empowerment of Sinnoh's middle class, and massive economic yields returning to Kalos's pioneer investors: forging a prosperity in both nations that Theron Halcyon was justified in accepting credit for." Vice-Marshal Looker paused for another hearty sip of coffee, before continuing with his synopsis.

"Realizing the far more secular attitude of Sinnoh's middle class, and their continuous struggle for representation within their own Government, Theron successfully portrayed himself as their _Emancipator,_ who not only toppled Sinnoh's oppressive Government, but who also strengthened Sinnoh's working class. Given the levels of parliamentary disatisfaction that the commonfolk of Sinnoh have polled, it's not too terribly difficult to understand how Sinnoh is of mixed political opinions regarding the Eidolon King and his claim to Kalos's power." Vice-Marshal Looker finished his explanation right around the same time that I saved Mac from hanging himself with his own supplemental nursing system.

"...So TH bought the people of Sinnoh? I know that they've been raised in a religious hegemony since the Terra Divide, but can't they still see how transparent TH's agenda is?" I asked in awe.

"Of course the people of Sinnoh know that Theron Halcyon bought them. What you don't seem to understand is that the Eidolon King paid a substantially higher price for them than what Sinnoh's central Government ever did." Vice-Marshal Looker replied.

I fell back against my seat as a cold feeling of dread crept up my spine. It wasn't the implications of Vice-Marshal Looker's report that frightened me so much.

-What scared me so much was that I could finally understand why so many people wanted to put TH on a throne.

"...And Unova's inclusion in the Concordant is just-" I began.

"-Par for the course. Despite the outright disgust that both Sinnoh and Kalos bear for Unova, Theron's promise of peace has struck a chord in every nation involved. If Theron successfully negotiates Unova's inclusion with both Fuhrer Adler and Sinnoh's Heads of State…"

"...He'll be the ultimate Hero of those three nations." I finished in a whisper.

"Correct. Theron will not only have promoted the middle class of Sinnoh and made his appeal known to the revolution hungry people of Kalos… But he will have also have made peace with those nations' greatest enemy." Vice-Marshal Looker summarized.

I couldn't believe it.

How could a monster like TH ever rise to heroism?

 _-How could he even conceive of peace?!_

"...So what's my mission tonight? Get the sit-rep on Unova's inclusion from TH?" I asked, still reeling from the most recent revelation.

"That is negligible. We have already predicted the likelihood of Theron and Fuhrer Adler's endeavor. They have the upper hand. What we wish for you to determine is Theron's political intentions _after_ he expands the Concordant." Vice-Marshal Looker amended in a dead tone.

"What kind of intentions do you think-?" I began in a curious voice, but Vice-Marshal Looker had stomached enough of my naivety.

"For the love of God, man! Must I spell it out for you?! _Will a union between Sinnoh, Kalos, and Unova result in their conquest of every other nation!?_ " Vice-Marshal Looker was an octave away from screaming.

-Oh.

 _Oh._

"...Oh shit…" I meekly muttered in complete shock.

"Do you understand now?! Why we are so concerned for Theron's prerogatives succeeding the Concordant's unification with Unova? Even when separated, both Kalos and Unova possess the military might required to endanger Indigo, but should the two nations combine their forces-" Vice-Marshal Looker trailed off with that lethal implication.

"You don't seriously think that-?!" Desperation may have shaken my voice, but impatience and terror had elevated the Vice-Marshal's volume.

"-WE DON'T KNOW! WE NEED YOU TO FIGURE IT OUT!" Vice-Marshal Looker snapped. I don't know if it was just dealing with my slow wits and ignorance; the pressure exerted from a possible war; or if it was just speaking of the Devil himself, but Vice-Marshal Looker was panicking.

And when someone as informed as an ACE Executive starts to panic…

...Anyone with less information should start shitting their breeches in absolute abandon.

"...There is a deadline, Agent Bastard. Six days from now, Theron is expected to attend a multi-national delegation hosted in Kalos's Ellis Archipelago. A delegation that will be held between Sinnoh's Primarch Cyrus Augustus-Romanov and the Holy Matron Cynthia Labelle; Unova's Fuhrer James Adler and his Chief Chancellor Aalee-Aasif Ghetsis; and finally, joint representing Kalos's Head of State: King Allan Arturia of Ruling House Arturia… _And Lord Theron Halcyon of Noble House Halcyon_." Vice-Marshal Looker confided, his tone growing darker as he listed off the names of the delegation's political attendees. I couldn't believe that Unova's Fuhrer was risking a trip into hostile territory to speak face to face with both Sinnoh and Kalos's Heads of State…

...But if TH had guaranteed the Fuhrer's safety…

...Then not even the combined forces of a divided Kalos and a compromised Sinnoh could hope to overcome the Eidolon King's might.

"...What if TH really means to settle for peace? What if we're all just getting freaked out about a good thing?" I whispered my prayer to a Vice-Marshal of ACE, as a desperate hope added a rattle to my voice.

And Vice-Marshal Looker just laughed in ridicule at my fervent prayer.

"Regardless of the possibility, we must adhere to suspicion and preparation. But what we have learned of Theron Halcyon… gives us little reason to believe that his intentions are any more noble than Fuhrer Adler's." Vice-Marshal Looker punctuated with an audible swallow.

And every hint of my desperate hope flickered away into smoke with the Vice-Marshal's admission.

"...How the hell am I supposed to figure this out?! He's motherfucking _Theron Halcyon!_ He's a Goddamn King who's beaten every political opponent that has ever stood in his way! And I'm just a fucking _Ranger!_ How the fuck is a lowly Greenback supposed to play political games with a Goddamn _King?!"_

Given the circumstances being imposed upon my person and the stakes implied by my likely failure: Could you really blame me for losing my head?

-Well, Vice-Marshal Looker sure could.

"Fear not, Agent Bastard. Rather similar to yourself, I have no confidence in you whatsoever. But be that as it may, you alone bear distinction for your most unique of positions…" Vice-Marshal Looker paused to steady his shaking breath, right before he galled me with the most alien declaration that I'd ever heard…

" _...Theron Halcyon trusts you."_

-That line would have been fucking funny…

 _...If it wasn't so fucking scary…_

"...I think I'm gonna be sick…" I choked out.

That wasn't a joke. I could feel my lunch rising up my throat.

"Theron has finally lowered his guard. He has exposed himself to _you_. I could not conceive of why, or even how, when Alexandria first alerted me to it… But Theron Halcyon has approached you as a confidant. I cannot stress the significance of this development enough, Agent Bastard… _Theron Halcyon most certainly trusts you._ " Vice-Marshal Looker's steady voice implied that he was doing his damndest to calm me down. He must have heard me retching on the other end.

"...So what do I do? Just go up to him and ask: _Hey TH! I hear that you've got this big shindig planned with Unova! So tell me, is the Concordant really going to conquer the rest of the world under your leadership?!"_ I finally found my voice, which was riddled with a mix of ridicule and anxiety.

"If I may be perfectly frank, Agent Bastard? After an analysis of your interactions with the Eidolon King, it is my recommendation that you proceed _bluntly_ in your investigation. Given the contents of your previous conversations, and the manner in which you both exchange: I'm left to assume that Theron Halcyon appreciates your honesty… even if it is an unrefined honesty." Vice-Marshal Looker threw in that last bit with a snide tone.

-Fucking Kalosians and their social expectations. They just can't stand the word: " _Fuck,"_ even if you say it from the bottom of your fucking heart.

"...I was already dreading dinner with him. I really didn't want to sit in a room occupied by a congress of Ghosts and their twisted fucking Channeler… _And now this…_ " I gurgled, as I fell against a napping Mac beneath the crushing weight of my own despair.

"You have a duty to uphold for your nation, Agent. See that your duty is done with dignity. You have all the details that I can provide. I am ending the transmission now. Good day." The line went dead, and I was left with yet another torturous truth to acknowledge and accept. I didn't know if this was just the next link of Lt. Surge's predicted political chain or if this was just a run of bad luck, but this shit was slowly destroying me and every conviction that I held dear.

"Fuck my life…" I moaned into Mac's fat rolls, and the infant Munchlax sent me a fond coo straight from happy fat-fuck dreamland.

…

Twenty-Hundred hours. Same damn day.

I was standing outside of a forty-story commercial plaza, waiting for my host to appear.

No Cortez to support me. That poor hound was on babysitting detail in our new hotel, keeping a mismatched pair of eyes on one lazy and obnoxious Munchlax for me, while I prepped my deck for the Eidolon King's arrival.

I didn't even have to glance at my watch to know what time it was.

A Kalosian Lord had designated eight-o'clock in the evening as his time for dining, and Theron Halcyon arrived at a very punctual eight PM dead.

-Of course, I never saw him coming. TH scared the bejesus out of me when he announced his presence with his musical accent's sudden elocution from my flank, along with that creeping sensation of his miserably deep Distortion seep.

"Good evening, Zane. I'm so glad to see that you're still in one piece." TH's smile was pleasant enough, but the way that his voice trailed off at the end of his greeting revealed that the Eidolon King was up to tricks as usual.

-Theron knew all about the contents of my day. The haunted bastard was still reading me like an open book.

"Thanks. It's been a shitty day from the start, and I'm only anticipating it to get even worse before the end." I grunted, ignoring TH's cordially extended arm. TH sighed, as he withdrew his offered limb.

"Nothing is ever quite what it seems, is it Ranger?" TH asked me in a weary voice.

"I dunno. I think that some things leave an accurate first impression." I grumbled, indicating his person with a slow incline to my head. TH just chuckled silently.

"Perhaps…" TH sighed again, and stared off into the distance.

"So what's for dinner? Heart of an orphaned virgin?" I asked as I looked up at the formidable structure behind me.

TH burst out laughing.

"Dear me, Zane. I do hope not. I simply couldn't condone the consumption of such a gruesome repast." TH chortled as his laughter died down.

"Well, I thought that you might want to familiarize yourself with the common fare of Unova, seeing how tight you are with their Fuhrer and all." I let slip to TH that I only go direct.

TH raised a hand to his shades, and massaged the bridge of his nose, clearly frustrated with the sudden turn in our conversation.

"Zane, please. I have spent mine entire day bandying politics with the most unsavory of individuals. Can we approach this meal as an opportunity to relax? Lord knows, we both have want of some simple peace." TH addressed me in the same tired voice that I'd heard earlier this morning. It was almost convincing enough for me to believe in the sincerity of TH's plea.

"It's kinda hard to relax when the possibility of war hangs over your nation like a shadow, TH…" I growled. TH straightened himself out, and fixed me with his most disarming of charming smiles.

"If that is the case then, Zane… May I suggest a compromise that will ease your concerns and cater to mine humble wishes?" TH asked, as that charming smile turned into a wicked smirk.

"I'm all expectant ears." I grinned right back at TH, hoping for some revelation that would aid ACE's investigation.

"Well… If we cannot enjoy some small leisure this evening, then perhaps we should instead celebrate tonight as though it were your last night on earth?" TH's evil smirk melted away into that pleasant smile again.

-And I was left stone cold and paralyzed with a new sensation of absolute terror, freshly born from TH's alternative suggestion.

"...I think that I'd rather relax…" I barely recognized the meek voice that emanated from my own mouth.

"Very good, Zane! I knew that you would see reason!" TH clapped a hand on my shoulder with his jubilant praise, and steered my perfectly compliant ass straight towards the oversized plaza's front doors.

"Oh for the love of the Crown…" TH swore as we came to a sudden halt. We'd come up a few paces short of the commercial establishment's front entrance. I failed to notice anything unusual about the glass doors before us, but something was clearly bothering my host.

"...Only in Kanto, does a five-star restaurant lease a suite from a plaza that fails to provide its patrons with a courtesy commissionaire…" TH grumbled from my side.

I stared at that unattended door for the better half of a minute, absolutely dumbstruck.

-Was this all it took to wreck TH's day?

"...You know, Zane… In Kalos, it is considered the honorable duty of the lesser birthed to shoulder such demeaning social necessities for the preservation of their Lords' dignity?" TH shamelessly hinted at his expectations of me. And I couldn't even hope to repress my laughter for all the death threats in the world.

"Well, thank God we're in Kanto, huh TH? We don't have a blueblooded caste here." I laughed, mocking the Eidolon King's less than subtle request.

"So am I to await the arrival of some courtious diplomat, who understands the importance of my station's appearance?" TH asked in a humorous voice, as his eyes returned to the door. It took me a moment to swallow this level of ego, before I offered TH a Kantonese Ranger's honest answer.

"I'm not your servant, TH. Open your own Goddamn door." I growled. TH turned back to me, with that creepy proud smile of his putting me in the awkward spotlight once again.

"Well said, Zane… Well said indeed." TH murmured fondly.

TH was fucking with me again, and I still hadn't a clue where all his little tests were leading.

"I'm afraid that my status bears with it some seemingly privileged social expectations. I am sorry for having wounded your justified sensibilities, so to amend the misunderstanding: do allow me to breach the threshold for us both…" TH spoke in an undertone, and quite suddenly came to stand uncomfortably close to yours truly.

"...I only ask that you refrain from screaming. Typhon, if you would be so kind?" TH simpered to his unseen wraith.

-And that's when the ground fell out from beneath my feet. I fell straight into a water darker than any found on earth. I couldn't even hear the pitch of my own scream as a flurry of white snakes wrapped around my person and dragged me deeper into the drowning abyss.

I was within the Distortion's deepest confines, and my temporally dilated brain would have never been able to realize it…

...Until I was suddenly standing within the plaza's well-lit lobby, screaming my head off beside TH.

"Congratulations, Ranger…" TH's smug voice sounded in my ringing ears, as my scream ended in the throes of hyperventilation, and an illness rose from my bowels alongside the onset of primordial panic.

"...You are now numbered among the select few who have entered the Distortion, and returned unscathed." TH murmured in that sinisterly smug voice.

-The puddle of vomit at my boots might have contested that claim.

"Dark- Water- Blue- Red- Eyes- Drowning-" I didn't even understand what the hell I was fervently muttering, but flashes of that unknown hell kept playing right behind my eyes.

"Breathe, Zane. Just breathe. You are unaccustomed to such sojourns, but rest assured: mine Typhon was most gentle." TH chided from my side.

"Snakes… Arms… Snakes- _Eyes..._ " My unheeded voice gasped.

"Zane, you are embarrassing yourself. Recall to mind your precious dignity, if you are so in need of aid." TH still addressed me in that courteous tone.

And some small indignant spark within me rose to answer the Eidolon King.

"You… You… _You asshole…_ " I hissed from my curl.

Yep. The Fucking Bastard was back, glaring his pure and livid hatred to the Devil at my left.

TH's shoulders shook, as those silent chuckles of his wracked the Eidolon King's frame.

"Shall we proceed to our reservation, Ranger? It appears that the establishment's staff is patiently awaiting our departure…" TH indicated the wide-eyed and pale faced lobby, who had escaped this Ranger's awareness by virtue of my panicstricken perception.

"Dickheads first." I growled, forfeiting pole position to my host.

"Very well then, Zane. After you." TH simpered, as an ethereal sword tip pressed into my back, implying that I was to take position ahead of the Devil of Kalos.

TH…

 _-You fucking cheater._

…

Our trip up to the thirty-second floor proceeded without any notable incidents, minus TH's Distortion seep killing the elevator lights four floors before our destination.

Thankfully, the lift's winch was unaffected by the unexpected power loss, so when the elevator doors opened to the well light lobby of _Le Epicure,_ I was slightly dazzled by the change.

But my grey-eyed host didn't even seem to notice the transition between dark and light.

"Le Duc de Maison Halcyon! Notre invité d'honneur! Please, come! We've been eagerly expecting you!" Before TH had even taken a step off the lift, a small entourage of the restaurant's management and staff had swarmed him, already prying corks from bottles and presenting their "guest of honor" with platters of cheese.

"Bonsoir, monsieur Christo. Je vous remercie pour votre hospitalité." TH warmly addressed the proprietor, and allowed himself to be led away by the fawning staff over into the main hall. I followed the procession feeling completely out of place in my BDU, as I traipsed week-old Cerulean crust through the pristine crystal and whitewashed dining hall.

Every other patron was wearing their absolute finest. I doubted that there was a suit in that restaurant that didn't cost less than a thousand Sandz. TH's fashionable apparel seemed oddly casual in this crowd, and my grungy getup just reeked of scandalous.

None of the other patrons bothered to lay eyes on TH as he drew near, but little sooner than his Distortion seep had vacated their awareness, then it was that the afflicted patrons began to buzz among themselves, shooting awestruck glances at his person, and whispering in amazed inflections to one another.

" _...Est-ce Le Roi Fantôme-?"_

" _-Il ne peut pas être!"_

" _-Que fait-il dans Kanto?!"_

Great. Damn near everyone in here was Kalosian.

The proprietor of _Le Epicure_ guided TH and the forgotten Ranger in his shadow away from the crowded hall and over towards a private parlour, which was replete with a balcony for scenic dining. But the parlour's centerpiece was a massive linen covered table, festooned in newly lit candles, and already heavily laden with a diverse variety of breads as well as innumerable bottles of wine.

"Prenez place je vous en prie." The proprietor pulled up a seat for his bleak majesty, and someone remembered to usher the unkempt Ranger into a chair positioned at the opposite end of the table.

"Je vous remercie beaucoup d'être venu. Que voulez-vous?" The proprietor asked TH.

"Les moules marinières, et une coupe de votre le jambon de Paris." TH replied in that pleasant voice.

"Un bon choix! Notre jambon de Paris est le meilleur à Kanto!" The proprietor kissed his fingertips and saluted his own establishment with pride.

"Que voulez-vous?" The proprietor turned to me with a welcoming smile.

-I had only the barest clue as to what he was asking of me, but his polite inflection was familiar enough to give this nigh-monolingual Ranger a foothold.

"...A menu written in english?" I asked with a cocky grin.

The proprietor's smile faded.

"Excuser mon ami. Il est très désagréable, non?" TH interjected with an urbane laugh.

"Oui." The proprietor's smile returned, though somewhat lessened than its former grandeur.

"...Il aura votre l'entrecôte bercy. Merci." TH dismissed the staff with that single utterance.

"So what am I supposed to eat? Just bread and cheese?" I asked, as I helped myself to a loaf and a bottle from the table's excessive bounty.

"Zane… Will you please practice an ounce of decency? Please…" TH begged as he rubbed his tired eyes in shame of me.

"Well I don't want to starve." I grunted, ripping off a hunk of bread with my teeth and popping the seal off a bottle of champagne.

"For the love of… I ordered you a meal, you philistine!" TH cried out in shock as I slurped the frothy head of champagne straight from the bottle's neck.

I just sighed in contentment as I propped my dirty boot heels up on the white table linens, before I procured a cigar from the inner pocket of my coat, and jammed that pungent blunt in between my teeth.

-I was rather enjoying this chance that TH had provided me with. I was rather enjoying my chance to spit on his decency.

"Zane… Don't make me summon Pariah and have him instruct you in proper dining etiquette." TH warned. I just snorted.

"I thought the plan was to relax, TH. Wouldn't that defeat the purpose?" I grunted, as I lit my cigar with a match. TH groaned, and rubbed his brow.

"...I suppose that it would." TH grudgingly admitted.

I filled my mouth with a lazy drag of Petilil weed, and worked my tongue through the fumes. TH sat perfectly still as he watched me. His mouth had formed a straight line, and the the creases above his shade-covered eyes hinted at a specific displeasure.

Detecting yet another chance to test my host's patience, I drew a new cigar from my coat pocket, and leaned across the table with a Ranger's dirty hospitality extended to the Eidolon King.

"Cigar?" I offered, as a mocking grin rose to my ears, betraying my expectations.

-But I was about to receive a slight surprise.

The cigar left my fingertips as though caught in a sudden breeze, and the rolled tobacco slowly hovered across the length of the table, held aloft by some invisible force. I was still trying to figure out what the hell had just happened when that cigar gently alighted itself upon TH's open palm.

"...Well ain't that a cute trick." I grunted, as TH wrapped his fingers around the delicate blunt.

"Thanatos, if you would be so kind?" TH murmured from his end.

The tip of TH's cigar inexplicably ignited, and only after that white flame had died down into wisps of thick smoke, did TH place my offering between his lips.

"Unovian?" TH asked in surprise, after he'd taken his first mouthful.

"Holy shit. You didn't seem the type." I chuckled with a slight inflection of ridicule tinging the color of my mirth, which seemed to fit this peculiar development.

"It may spoil the taste of our meal, but I'm certainly not adverse to sampling some simple pleasure before dining." TH softly replied from his end.

"...Did the Fuhrer serve you the same weed?" I asked in a suspicious tone. TH smiled ruefully, but it was more of a smile to himself than a smile meant for me.

"I confess, I only took up the habit for diplomatic appearances. Though if I may confide in you, Zane? I have grown rather fond of such a habit..." TH settled back in his chair, before the Eidolon King shocked me with yet another unexpected display.

There was now a second pair of heels on the table. TH's fine leather soles stood opposed to the cleated rubber of my own.

"...Just who are you, TH?" I asked, my voice both pensive and curious.

TH removed the cigar from his lips, and released a ring of smoke, before he drew a shaky intake of breath.

"...Not now, Zane. I believe that we both came to this table for want of peace…" TH murmured from his recline.

I checked that sigh before it rose any further than my throat.

"...Whatever you say, Theron." I grunted, taking another hearty swig from my champagne bottle.

…

Around the time that TH and I had both removed our shoes from the table, and smothered our cigars, the main course of the meal had arrived.

I'd already drunk a bottle of champagne, gorged myself on a loaf of poppy covered semolina batard, and sampled more cheeses than I even knew existed…

-But the Kobe rib steak served with seared shallots and grilled lemon, all smothered in white wine sauce, and topped with chopped fresh parsley and shredded truffle?

...I could still find room for that.

Now, I've tried a little bit of everything, and while Johtonese cuisine stands as my uncontested favorite for its odd mix of seafood, seed oils, spicy sprouts, and fermented seasonings…

-You just can't beat Kalosian dining when it comes down to tasting good ol' fashioned and wholesome bliss.

TH looked pretty content himself, sucking down white wine-braised mussels accompanied with roasted portabella caps, alongside a decorative serving of sliced ham and blood-oranges.

"It's been too long since I've last tasted this…" TH sighed in some fond nostalgic sentiment.

"It's the first time that I've ever tasted this." I grunted from my end.

"I'ze meal to your liking, my Lord?" The proprietor had switched to english, likely for my benefit more so than anyone else's.

"I would commend your establishment before the whole of the Royal Court, Dumont Cristo. It has been my greatest pleasure to serve as your guest." TH had removed his hat just before the primary course had been served, yet the unmarked right hand of the Eidolon King still found its way across TH's left breast.

" _Vous êtes trop gentil, Roi Fantôme…"_ Dumont was so overcome with emotion, that he broke down crying right over TH's shoulder.

After the sobbing proprietor had been led away by his staff, a delicate pastry was served, loaded with some kind of soft cheese and topped with a sweet berry sauce and fluffy cream. I couldn't find space for more than a mouthful of that tart, but it felt like a sin to let such a glorious little treat go to waste.

A round of sweet red wine filled our crystals as an accompaniment for dessert, and the attending staff abandoned the parlour once more to the two young men within.

When the the door to the parlour had been shut, and the privacy curtains had been lowered, I lifted my fresh crystal with a sigh, and imbibed a sip of the syrupy wine.

"I hate to ruin such a good meal…" I started, staring at the rivulets of ruby alcohol that lacquered the rim of my crystal.

TH lowered his own crystal, and rested his hidden heavy eyes on me.

"...But I've got a job to do, TH. And no pleasantry is ever going to come between me and my home." My voice hardened as I set aside my wine.

"...Zane…" TH began on a bitter note.

"-Are you going to bring war to my home, TH?" I asked in a shaken voice, challenging his averted gaze. TH bit down on the tail of a weary laugh, and met my cold gaze with his sequestered eyes.

"...There's no easy answer to that, Zane."

My hands balled into fists, and I hid my trembling arms beneath the table.

"Yes or no will suffice, _Lord Halcyon_." I growled. TH lowered his eyes again, before he drew a long, steady breath.

"...Will change come to Indigo? Most certainly. Will there be those who resist it? Irrefutably. Will there be loss? Absolutely… But will the whole of humanity stand as all the greater for it?" TH asked, his final forlorn question directed to me.

"...So you will bring war to Indigo?" I asked, as my teeth clenched in a mix of fear and rage.

"Nothing I see is certain, Zane… Nothing I do is guaranteed to spare us…" TH murmured, his voice both tired and afraid.

"-Why?!" I hissed, glaring at the Devil just a table's breadth away.

"You don't understand, Zane. I don't expect you to. I wouldn't understand it, if I had not seen it…" TH raised a mutilated hand before his shade covered eyes, and sneered down at his own scarred palm.

"Why war!? You could make peace! You could save so many! You could actually do something human for a change, you monster!" I was out of my chair and leaning over the table, only a decibel below a roar.

"-That's what I am trying to do!" TH rose from his own chair with a roar of his own.

"I'm trying to save us, Zane! I'm trying to establish peace! I'm trying to end this war! The same war that you and I started!" TH flung his empty desert plate across the room in a fit of passion, and staggered his breathing against the anger that shook his entire frame.

-And I was left cold and frightened.

Cold and frightened by his latest of words.

"What war?! What war that you and I started?" I asked in an indignant hiss.

"...Don't ever speak of it, Zane. Not to ACE. Not to the Nine Lives. Not to the Rangers. Not to anyone. If you wish to live… If you truly seek peace-" I cut TH off with a short and rude laugh.

"-Me? I don't have to say a Goddamn thing! All I needed was to hear you say it! 'Cause guess who's listening from my pocket, TH?!" I gloated in a maddened voice, as I whipped out my Tact. Pad and boldly revealed it to the Eidolon King.

"Say hello to Alexandria, TH! Come on, Alex! Say hello to the dumbass who just spilled the beans to ACE!" I cackled, flaunting the Tact. Pad over my head for my sole audience to see.

"...Alexandria?" I asked when my Tact. Pad failed to respond.

"Did you really think me a fool, Ranger?" TH sat down in his chair with an exhausted sigh.

"Alex?! Come on now, wake up! Wake up!" I was panicking now, as I mashed in every input that I knew to activate ACE's Porygon-Two.

"...Mine Typhon is such a passionate wraith in his artistry. Wouldn't you agree, Ranger?"

My eyes lifted from my dead Tact. Pad, to behold the Eidolon King lackadaisically whirling the red liqueur around in his crystal with a rotating wrist.

"...After all, he did learn such a deceptive craft from the very best." TH murmured to his wine glass, as the implications of those former words caught up to me.

"...First Ranger to have returned from the Distortion unscathed, huh?" I asked in a hollow voice. TH's head lolled against his shoulder when he looked at me.

"...You set it all up… The whole Goddamn door scene. You've been setting me up all along…" I murmured in disbelief. TH just snorted and shook his head.

"...And to think that I was wondering if I could actually trust you…" I growled in an undertone.

"Really, Zane? What a foolish sentiment. How could you possibly trust me, when I can't even trust you?" TH's bitter voice stung me to the core.

"...So what now?" I asked, tossing my dead Tact. Pad onto the table in an admission of defeat. TH just kept staring at me.

"...Well, come on. I haven't got all night. Just call up Pariah and get it over with." I slowly shook my head as I spoke those unimpassioned words.

"...To think that I'm gonna die after a meal like that… Oh wait… You and your fucking Kalosian courtesies. That was supposed to be my last meal, wasn't it?" I breathed out in a tired sigh.

"Zane…" TH began in a weary voice.

"-I don't care, TH. I really don't. There's nothing left for me here. I've got nothing worth living for anymore. So just get it over with already." I could feel the onset of hot tears pooling in either of my eyes.

It wasn't the fear of death that brought those tears to my mismatched eyes.

...It was hearing the bitter words that had just left my own mouth which gave me reason to cry.

"Zane…" TH threw back his shaking head, and assumed a diagonal recline, before the Eidolon King drew in another long and heavy breath.

"...I'm not going to kill you." TH murmured to the ceiling.

The fresh silence that stretched between us paved my perception of time unto eternity.

I could only stare at TH.

And the Devil of Kalos could only stare back.

"...Why?" I asked, when reason finally defied that seemingly endless elapse.

"...Because my eyes still see a purpose for you. A potential far greater than anything you could possibly imagine…" TH rose from his sideways slump, and straightened himself out in his chair.

"Bullshit." I retorted in a growl, still standing in firm denial at my solitary edge.

TH began to laugh. Sad laughter. Broken laughter. Lonely laughter.

"I wish that I could show you, Zane… I wish that I could make you see. But I cannot take you that far into the vision. I cannot take you to the _Kings…_ " TH murmured.

I flung my chair aside, and bore down upon this embittered demon, devoid of all my fears.

As the distance between us waned, and as my hostile advance slowed before its cease, I halted less than a meter away from his weary majesty, and glared down into his blackened shades.

"Show me." I growled in a challenge, and for a moment, TH's heavy breathing stilled.

"...I can only show you the surface, Zane. I can't even direct you to the core…" TH whispered.

" _Show. Me."_ My larynx rumbled with a decisive breath.

I could feel them growing closer. I'd stood in their shadow for so long now, that I was becoming numb to their wretched presence. The terrible misery that encompassed my waking life was a scar they had left with me, carved from their toxic proximity. I was becoming accustomed to the subconscious torture dealt by the Ghosts…

...I was beginning to accept the futility of my own life.

"...Very well, Zane…" The Eidolon King murmured so quietly, that I had to strain my ears just to hear him.

TH adjusted his posture in his chair, and raised both hands to the frames of his spectacles. One gnarled and scarred claw caught my eye when the Eidolon King paused in his motion.

"...And this time, Zane? Try not to blink before the shadows take you…" TH whispered, as he stripped away his shades.

And I met those cursed grey eyes with my naked own.

…

 _Black. Whispers. Black. Screaming. Black. Chanting._

 _The endless deep black, and the resounding cries of agony._

 _It's all that I can see. It's all that I can hear. Here, in this rotting world. Here, where the walls live and die. Here, in this fading land. Here, in this cancerous hell._

 _Black. Dying._

 _I can still see him. He is the center of this pestilent ruin. He is the heart of this failing reality._

 _Grey. Cold._

 _-Eyes._

 _They stand stark and unearthly, the sole article untouched by the creeping rot. Grey eyes. Pale eyes. Dead eyes._

 _-Ghost eyes._

 _He is bones and pitch, moaning out his final moments in an eternal chorus. Dying forever in this bleak and awful land. Prisoner of the rot. Purveyor of the blight._

 _Black. Shapes._

 _Black. Forms._

 _They crawl from his dripping bile, rising from the fetid ink. They have no definition yet, but they struggle against their bonds. They are trying to break free. They are trying to be heard._

 _-They are trying to reach me._

 _Black. The shapes of hands._

 _Black. The forms of faces._

 _Black. The shapes of men, all bound to one another, and to the shadows that bind them._

 _The shadows beckon and beg, welcoming me to cross the veil. I can almost see them now. Now, when my only eye is burning._

 _I am moving closer. The rotting world becomes expansive to my perception. Vast in its dimensions. Infinite in my awareness._

 _-This rotting world is drawing me in._

 _I am afraid. I am terrified. This is just a dream. This is just a nightmare. This is just an illusion, cast from the light of those cold and ever-dying grey eyes._

 _But it is all so real to my senses. It is all so real to my mind._

 _Can I escape? Is it too late now? Am I to wither here forever, and rot alongside his bones?_

 _Black._

 _Black hands reach._

 _Black._

 _Black faces speak._

 _Come closer, they beg me. Come past the veil, they plead._

 _Escape…_

 _It is my one desire. Reject this vile illusion. Flee from this twisted place._

 _-Escape._

 _Now the black faces laugh and weep. Escape? They ask me. Escape from what?_

 _What are you afraid of, sweet little life?_

 _Come closer, frightened life. Come past the tattered veil. Come. See what you fear to see._

 _-Come see the truth._

 _I am moving again, though the waxing sting clouds my vision with tears. I approach their whispering veil. I stand before the tattered threshold of their truth. I hesitate to go any further…_

 _...But now I am within their reach._

 _Black hands grasp me in desperate violence. Black faces laugh and jeer. They have me now. And past the veil their black hands drag me. Drag me past the veil to see. Drag me to see their truth._

 _Red._

 _Green._

 _Blue._

 _White._

 _Black._

 _Grey._

 _I see them now, in twisted shapes and tortured figures that bear some resemblance to my untainted own._

 _Red. He is screaming. Red. He is bound. Red. He is burning. Red. He is imprisoned. Red. Chained within a glass lantern._

 _Green. She is wheezing. Green. She is hanging. Green. She is rotting. Green. She is imprisoned. Green. Chained within the eaves of a mouldering tree._

 _Blue. He is choking. Blue. He is floating. Blue. He is drowning. Blue. He is imprisoned. Blue. Chained beneath the malevolent water._

 _White. He is laughing. White. He is struggling. White. He is headless. White. He is imprisoned. White. Chained to his own cradled madness._

 _Black. He is gasping. Black. He is crowned. Black. He is cored. Black. He is imprisoned. Black. Chained to both his shield and his sword._

 _Grey. He is weeping. Grey. He is dying. Grey. He is alone. Grey. He is shackled. Grey. His prison lies in waiting._

 _Grey._

 _They are all waiting._

 _Grey._

 _The Five stand waiting._

 _Grey._

 _Around him, waiting._

 _Grey._

 _All waiting for him to die…_

…

"Zane!"

" _Red, he is burning-"_

"Zane!"

" _Green, she is rotting-"_

"Snap out of it, Zane!

" _Blue, he is drowning-"_

"Did you see the Kings?! Speak to me, Zane!"

" _White, he is headless-"_

"It's over, Zane! Wake up! Wake up!"

" _Black, he is-"_

"-On your feet, Ranger!"

I snapped out of the nightmare at the sound of those intense and meaningful words.

TH was kneeling over me, his shades once more covering those cursed grey eyes.

"What the-?!"

"Breathe, Zane. Just breathe. You're awake. You're no longer in the vision. Just breathe." A mutilated hand took hold of my shoulder, and squeezed my collar firmly.

"-What was that?!" I fought the panic, and struggled to rise from my back.

But the world spun before my eyes, and a wretched sensation in my gut brought me back down to the floor.

"Slowly, Zane! Slowly. Don't vomit again. Just take it slowly, Ranger. Slow down for now." TH was speaking softly, trying to soothe me past the horror.

"What was that-?! Was that-?!" My hand rose to cover my mouth in reflex, as every fine thing I'd eaten tonight erupted past my splayed fingers.

"Slowly, Zane. I said to take it _slowly_." TH sighed in exasperation above me, before he rose from his knees and settled back into his chair.

"...Did you see the Kings?" TH asked, when I'd wiped the warm puke off my chin.

"-King. Only one. _Black. He is crowned-_ " I began anew in a fervent voice.

"-Pariah. You saw Pariah. I should have known…" TH interjected in a frustrated tone, drawing my vacating sight back into sharper focus.

"...You didn't see the Kings, Zane. Well, not the Kings that I wanted you to see. But you did see _a King_. Pity that it was a dead one." TH rubbed his tired eyes.

" _What-?!"_ I hissed in shock.

"As I said before, I can only take you to the surface. I can only show you so much of the vision." TH sounded disappointed, though his displeasure was not directed at me.

" _The pierced King?!_ That was _Pariah?!"_ I cried out in disbelief. TH exchanged his sigh for a chuckle, and turned to me with a warm smile.

"Remember our argument from this morning? Remember our little discussion about the Ghosts? Has your… perspective altered in any way, since meeting mine wraiths face to naked face?" TH asked in a pleasant voice.

I could only stare in vapid incredulity at the smirking lunatic who sat above me.

"No. Hell no. Nothing I saw in there was real-"

"-Can you still smell it, Zane? The blood behind the walls? The rot overtaking the rot?" TH asked me with a teasing smile.

I shuddered with a gag as the memory fed that phantom odor directly into my olfactories.

"-Hmm?" TH droned pleasantly from above me, his demeanor both patronizing and courteous all at the same time.

"...It wasn't real." I growled, lifting myself from the floor. TH exploded with a sudden, short laugh.

"If you do not believe your senses, Ranger… Then what do you believe?" TH asked in an amused tone, lightly inflected with ridicule.

" _-Not that."_ I rumbled in an oath. TH snorted, and rested his cheek upon a leaning fist.

"Very well, Zane. You can of course, believe in whatever you desire…" TH was talking down to me as if I were child relegating him with daydreams.

"Red… That's supposed to be Thanatos, right?" I laughed right back at TH, countering his ridicule with my own.

"Green is supposed to be Demeter. Blue is Typhon. White is Exodus. And apparently, Black is Pariah-?" I winded down to chuckle at that one. TH just sighed, and massaged his creased brow with a free hand, before pulling his long absent cadet hat back upon his head.

"...So who's the Grey? I haven't met that Ghost yet." I snorted, meeting TH's hidden eyes with a cocky smile.

"...Who do you think, Ranger?" TH asked with a morbid humor, pointedly tapping the frames of his fancy shades with a pair of twisted fingers.

-That killed my cocky smile pretty damn quickly.

"...So that's the family, huh? Five little Ghosts and their oozing Channeler…" I tried to find a mocking tone with which to voice those words, but I still hadn't recovered from TH's prior insinuation.

"Well, all but one member of the family…" TH whispered, as his right hand subconsciously reached for his collar. A peculiar expression overcame the Eidolon King's face, and I was struck with a sudden curiosity.

"...So who is number six?" I asked my host, and a halfhearted smile rose to replace TH's smirk.

"Unless your name is Enzo-Batshit-Davinci, all Champions fight with a full deck of six. Five Ghosts, TH. So what's your number six?" I asked, and TH's right hand clenched on something beneath the sternum of his coat.

"...My Scarlet Letter." TH murmured.

I piqued my head at an angle, and a quirked muscle raised my right eyebrow.

"...My beloved badge of shame…" TH whispered, his voice barely audible.

The Eidolon King's face fell in sorrow, and guilt pursed the corners of his lips.

"...Who?" I asked in a curious tone, and TH broke off his ocular contact with me, as he shuddered on a watery sigh.

"...I suppose… I suppose that I should introduce you, Zane. I suppose that… she should meet you." TH hesitated to rise from his chair, and I was struck by the profanity of some unbelievable scene.

There was a narrow trickle of water falling from below the right rim of TH's fancy shades…

...Before a scarred hand rose to intercept and obliterate every trace of that single glistening tear.

…

We were standing on the balcony of the parlour now. TH had led me to this narrow outcropping, thirty-two stories above the Vermilion City streets. I waited patiently for my host to unveil this strangely personal entity, but TH seemed distracted by the barely visible sea south of our urban roost, whose rolling surface was lit only by moonlight.

TH's right hand still clutched at something beneath his coat, and the the expression on his half hidden face was one of both memory and grief.

"...She is so far from me now. So many, many, many leagues away… My sweet… _Kalos_ … My sweet, beloved _home…_ " TH's voice warbled near the end of that mournful whisper, as a shudder wracked his weary frame.

I was perfectly silent. I tried not dwell on this personal scene. I tried to ignore the wiping of his eyes. I tried to ignore his quiet gasps.

I did everything that I could to avoid humanizing the Devil beside me.

...But some accursed sense of empathy bled through my convictions, and pity made its appeal known to the conscience of my being.

"...What did you do, TH? Why can't you go back home?" I asked, my voice steady and devoid of suspicion. TH started suddenly, as if he had forgotten all about his audience.

"...I'll show you why, Zane. Forgive me. I do not wish to speak of it." TH mumbled, as he fidgeted with the item beneath his coat.

"...Right." TH swallowed his unstable breath as he attempted to coach himself past his reluctance, before he slowly unzipped his coat's collar, and dragged the zipper down to his abdomen.

TH's hands reverently took hold of something worn around his neck. I couldn't quite make it out initially, but when I realized what it was, the decorum just seemed so out of place on a man of fashion and grace.

It was a necklace. A clumsy necklace. Comprised of once vividly painted wooden blocks and beads, all haphazardly arranged on a simple string.

-A child's craft. A child's necklace.

TH began to choke, as his fingers stroked an etching on one faded and splintering block. Then he began to shake against the balcony railing, as he stared off across the sea.

" _...I miss you…"_

So said the faintest whisper that a man could breathe, a mournful sentiment almost lost on the howling highrise winds.

No hand rose to wipe away these tears, as they trickled unimpeded from his cheeks and down his chin, dripping onto the maroon sweater that he wore beneath the quilted fabric of his slim coat.

Theron was rolling with some awful grief, and I, locked in pity, could not move to intervene, so profound did his pain seem…

And so I stood there waiting, the lone witness to this scene...

...As a loathsome Devil wept his grief unto the sea…

"...Grigori, I need you yet again." TH whispered to the wind.

TH's hands shifted their focus, as he raised an onyx and gold sphere pendant from the necklace's bail. Unlike the faded wooden beads, this sphere shined in the moonlight with a brilliant luster, and two deep-set ruby rings festooned the sphere along either circumference of the opposing celestial poles.

When TH's thumbs brushed a mechanical lense set in gold, I identified the sphere as a custom Pokeball, crafted from the most valuable of materials.

A King's crown jewel.

-A Luxury Ball.

"Arise, Grigori. Bring her back to me…" TH murmured, and released the Pokeball's gilded seal.

-One emerald and black coherent beam condensed into a defined and expanding shape.

A five second delay transpired…

And…

...There…

...She…

... _Was._

My ass hit the ground in an instinctive response as I scrambled desperately back to the parlour doors on my hands and heels.

I still don't know what I had been expecting.

Maybe I had subconsciously hoped that TH's sixth mon would've been a cute and cuddly Skitty…

...But why anyone would even think "Skitty" in regards to Theron Halcyon is beyond me.

"Oh fuck me…" I breathed out in stunned terror.

- _That Goddamn monster had just taken notice of me…_

...And all three of its massive ugly fucking heads were turning my way in a hissing storm of spit.

"Grigori. Please… I'm here." TH whispered, as he stepped between me and _it._

Those six hideous spiderleg wings grasped and scrabbled across the balcony as that huge beast rose above her Trainer.

An avian's dark blue thorax and abdomen, both scaled instead of feathered; both scarred from centuries of conflict; both bearing symptoms of emaciation from extended torpor, scraped over the balcony railing.

A raptor's pair of bruise colored and twisted talons gripped the balcony ledge, before tearing masoned stones loose and flinging them into the street far below.

An insanely long and serpentine blue tail lashed out against the plaza's skyrise walls, shattering windows and buckling cross beams beneath its unbelievable strength.

A shaggy mane of black fur began at its collars, which coated all three of its long necks and extended laterally between the dorsal roots of its unnatural chitin armored wings.

Two inferior heads rested atop the necks to either side of the violet-frilled primary head, and all three of its blue sphenacodontidae faces were covered in grotesque wrinkles, warty growths, and blistering scales.

There was an asymmetrical and blotchy red pattern around all three of its separate pairs of eyes…

...And those eyes…

 _-I should never have looked into those God forsaken eyes._

"Grigori! Calm yourself!" TH shouted at his abomination, as she ripped the balcony apart in her enraged pursuit of the foolish Ranger who had dared to meet her eyes.

"Grigori! Grigori, it's me!" TH was screaming at his dragon, as he tore off his shades and intercepted her three-headed lunge with his grey-eyed stare.

And with what could only be described as a miracle…

...That giant fucking dragon pulled its killing blow short of both TH and me…

...Before Grigori withered before her Trainer with a painful moan, and lowered her six red eyes from TH's grey-eyed stare.

"There, there, Grigori. It's okay. You're okay." TH's voice softened, and his arms reached out to embrace a mouth large enough to swallow him whole.

"Do they teach you nothing in the Ranger Corps, Zane?" TH sighed in exasperation, as he drew himself bodily against Grigori's moaning middle face.

-I was too busy hyperventilating on the balcony's door stoop to respond.

"You should never look an Interloper in the eyes, Ranger. Most especially, not the eyes of a _Hydreigon…_ " TH whispered in reverence, as he tenderly stroked Grigori's nasal ridge.

…

- _Hydreigons._

The only thing more rare than these cocksuckers are the Steelixia species and the Aegislash.

Hydreigons take two of the most unpredictable and unstable species-types in existence, and merge them into a single highly-volatile mold.

One: Hydreigons are Dark-Types.

Yep. A living interdimensional specialist. Hydreigons are insanely rare for a couple of reasons. No other mon takes eleven-hundred years to mature into adulthood. And no other mon, save for the Ghosts, spends the majority of its post eleven-hundred year life firmly rooted in the Distortion: rarely leaving that bleak existence for anything other than the occasional bicentennial meal.

Thanks to their longterm stay in the Distortion, Hydreigons go _fucking nuts_ with paranoia. No other mon is in panic mode one-hundred percent of the time, and thanks to their unrivalled Distortion affinity among the Interlopers, Hydreigons can do wacked out shit every bit as crazy as the most powerful of Ghosts.

And all that dangerous unpredictability is only complimented by the Hydreigons' second indexed species-type…

 _...They're motherfucking Dragons._

-Meaning that " _Violent as Hell"_ is the Hydreigon's default setting, and given their excessive Distortion-induced paranoia…

...Hydreigons generally skip the default setting in favor of their preferred tune: " _Absolute Fucking Destruction."_

God only knows how a Dragon evolved into an Interloper, but somewhere in the Para-Kingdom's evolutionary history, some cataclysmic interdimensional event engulfed an entire ecosystem of mon…

...And dragged the rapidly evolving monsters straight in the Distortion's hell.

The Interlopers didn't evolve in a natural environment. At least not in their later evolutionary history. But the new breeds of monsters that were born in that impossible realm developed traits unlike anything else ever seen in the natural world…

...And the descendents of those twisted freaks who emerged from bleak hell eras later introduced the previously impossible biological mechanic of gravity manipulation to the Para-Kingdom's evolutionary arms race.

Even after a thousand plus years of continuous research, humanity still doesn't know how the Interlopers do it. All we know is that Interlopers have a gland in their brain that appears to be required for the gravitational manipulation reflex, but fuck if we can figure out how the hell it works.

Yet despite mankind's current scientific understanding and all of its shortcomings, Interlopers innately know how to make that mysterious gland _work._

-And they use that weird fucking gland all of the Goddamn time.

The most common application for the Interlopers' gravitational manipulation is _Feinting_.

 _Feinting_ is a strategic ambush technique that most Interlopers favor over any of their other innate weaponry. The weird-ass bastards alter the flow of their personal space-time continuum to such a degree that they physically pass from the mundane realm and into the Distortion, and they can do it all with the same ease that humans know in opening and closing doors. While they're in the Distortion, only their fellow Interlopers or the Ghosts can touch them. And when they decide to come out of Distortion, an Interloper can alter its re-entry to a dissimilar location in natural space-time than where they originally entered the Distortion.

-And thanks to human ingenuity and centuries of experimentation, well-trained Interlopers can engender multiple Distortion breaching "doors" on the fly, which allocates them with multiple avenues of attack that few opponents can see coming.

But a handful of Dark-Types have genetically discovered alternate uses for their gravity bending mechanics. And these specific Interlopers tend to require specialized handling whenever they are encountered.

I am of course, referring to the Tyranitars, Zoroarks, and Hydreigons.

Each one of these three species can do something even nastier than Feinting with their innate Distortion cursed gifts.

Tyranitars can summon a deathstorm from the Distortion to skin their opponents alive in a turbulent flurry of radioactive black glass. Sometimes the scale of these deathstorms are so massive and consistent that Tyranitars can erode entire ecosystems into irradiated grit, gore, and mulch: which makes for one of the most hazardous forms of mon-induced weather phenomenon known to mankind.

Why are the seemingly feeble Zoroarks considered so fucking dangerous? Well, it all comes down to those evil fucking illusions that their species are so fond of crafting. Bending light with gravity can make for some pretty intricate designs, and packs of Zoroarks are not opposed towards organizing and utilizing these intricate designs for widespread chaotic and lethal applications.

...And as for the Hydreigons…

-Well, the Hydreigons just know how to use their gravitational manipulation abilities to do some ungodly awful shit.

Which was evident in Grigori's ability to remain aloft in the sky, despite the fact that her vile wings could never provide the necessary taxonomical thrust required for sustained flight.

Hydreigons can only stay airborne because they can _ignore gravity._

...And that's just an involuntary reflex of their unbelievable power.

Solitary Hydreigons are capable of destroying fortified human cities in a single day, by clever use of their gravitational manipulation abilities alone.

This has made them a rival for the Lima-Ones in the _Threat to Humanity_ department.

...And it's why they are ranked right at the tippy-top of the exclusive eight para-species clubhouse known as the _Disaster Index Classification._

Fucking Hydreigons: they can eat Goddamn Gyaradosia just as easily as the mighty Dragon-Snakes can eat fucking prawns.

-Thank the stars above that only four Hydreigons are known to exist on earth…

' _Cause otherwise…_

...Fuck, I don't even want to think about _otherwise…_

…

"...How the hell did you get a fucking Hydreigon?!" I choked, as TH rested his forehead against Grigori's wrinkled brow. A sad smile formed on TH's lips, as the Hydreigon's dual inferior heads tentatively inspected the Eidolon King with their olfactory foramen.

"...That's a story for another time, Zane." TH answered softly, as his arms ceased their tender focus on Grigori's primary snout, and shifted down to stroke the jawlines of her inferior heads.

"It's good to see you again, my beloved friend…" TH whispered, drawing one inferior head level with his lips, before lightly kissing the tip of that hideous blue snout.

Grigori began to coo, as her inferior heads rubbed their flaking scalps against TH's sides in an obvious display of affection.

-That spectacle alone registered as impossible to my Ranger Corps educated mind, but then I noticed TH's naked grey eyes.

TH was staring right into the pair of pupiless red eyes that rested on Grigori's primary head.

-And he was somehow still alive.

"...How are you doing that?" I whispered in disbelief. TH chuckled slightly, and cupped a hand below Grigori's primary chin.

"...Grigori is unique among all the various species of her kind. Well that, and both she and I… share a distinct perspective, making her only all the more unique." TH's lips now found Grigori's primary snout, and the passionate monster drew its arthropodic wings around herself and her Trainer, as a chorus of musical warbles sounded from her three throats.

"...I missed you too, my dear." TH whispered, as his arms once more wrapped around the Hydreigon's monstrous face.

" _-How?!"_ I hissed from the backdrop.

This thing couldn't be a Dragon. I'd seen the aftermath of what happened to Trainers when they tried to pet their Dragons.

...And apart from the mauled and partially digested human remains…

-There generally wasn't much left to see.

"...She's a mother, Zane… A mother who never saw her eggs hatch…" TH murmured in an emotional voice, and Grigori reflected her Trainer's demeanor with a mournful moan.

-That didn't give me an answer at all.

Dragon mommies may be fierce when it comes to their hatchlings' defense, but as soon as the babies prove that they can fend for themselves…

...Well, Dragon mommies will treat their babies just like they treat any other Dragon.

-Which is to say: _With lethal amounts of violence._

"...So she thinks that you're her child?" I asked in a steady voice. I started to rise to my feet-

-But a sudden surge of Trainer restrained draconic violence put me back onto my ass.

"Grigori, fear not. The Ranger is a friend. Please allow him to rise." TH chided as he left his Dragon's side to assist me to my feet.

"To answer your previous question, Zane…" TH murmured as he abandoned the shaken Ranger to return once more to his Dragon's hissing embrace.

"...Our relationship once reflected a maternal design. We have both built off of that intimate template, and now we know each other as true family." TH fell back against Grigori's ribbed breast, and sighed with contented familiarity as the Hydreigon drew all her wings and heads protectively around him.

"Of all the souls who serve me, Grigori alone knows my truest love." TH buried his nose into the Hydreigon's ratty mane, and stroked her primary throat with a mutilated hand.

That Dragon hadn't taken her eyes off of me, despite TH's reassurances. Grigori clearly didn't trust me, and she was only forestalling my gruesome death out of her respect for TH.

"...I hope that doesn't mean what it sounds like it means, TH…" I grunted, trying to calm my jangled nerves with tasteless humor.

Grigori hissed and lunged at my suggestive jab, and the uncomfortable proximity of her snapping jaws brought yet another lethal dose of adrenaline to this now thrice-frazzled Ranger.

"...Please, Zane. For your own good: Please don't insult my Grigori." TH whispered, as he leaned an alabaster cheek against his angry Dragon's mangy tri-forked throat.

…

I woke to the sound of a firm knock on my hotel room door. Cortez lept out of my lap before I'd even opened my eyes.

"What fucking time is it?" I grumbled, shoving my way out of Mac's sleeping curl.

The time was early sunrise, which I surmised from the pink glow of the hotel curtains. I cleared my throat with a rumble, and staggered on my stiff legs over towards the door.

But after a quick glance through the peephole, I was wide awake.

"Oh fuck me… What now?" I unfastened the deadbolt, and opened the door to greet my unwanted caller.

-And Agent Matusik stepped right into my hotel room without even giving me a complimentary goodmorning.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I asked, closing the door behind ACE's hairy techno-hippy.

"Where is Alexandria?" Agent Matusik went straight to the point. I snorted, and pulled the dead Tact. Pad out of my coat pocket.

"How many Porygons does TH have to kill before ACE finally figures it out?" I rubbed my eyes with a chuckle when Agent Matusik relieved me of my Tact. Pad.

"You're not the only one asking that question. Do you have any coffee on hand?" Judging from his sour attitude and the bags beneath his eyes, Agent Matusik seemed to be fighting the sleep just as much as I was.

"Yeah, the shit brewer is over on the other side of Pudgy Island. Help yourself." I shook my head with a smile.

"Funny…" Agent Matusik growled, inaccurately receiving my 'Pudgy Island' directive as an unofficial 'Fuck off.'

Then he noticed the sleeping pile of fat in the middle of the hotel room.

"HOLY SHIT!"

Agent Matusik was suddenly wide awake, and so was Pudgy Island.

"Goddamnit… Go back to bed, Mac!" I roared over Mac's panicked bleating. But soothing the tubby fucker was gonna require a lot more tender affection from Momma Zane than just his loving voice. I approached my angsty Munchlax with audibly heavy steps, alerting Mac to my waning tolerance threshold. Mac exchanged the bleats for whimpers when my thunderous steps sounded but a pace away.

"Go to sleep, Mac." I growled, and a snuffling G.I. Munchlax heeded his CO's command. Turning back to the hotel room's entrance, I noticed that Agent Matusik had situated himself in a rather unusual location.

-Agent Matusik was standing on a tabletop with his back pressed firmly into the wall, while both of his grapefruit sized eyes were locked onto the sniffling Mac.

"...What's the matter, Agent? Never seen a Munchlax this close before?" I snorted.

"I'm-I'm a Quantum Programmer. N-not a fucking Ranger-" Agent Matusik stammered.

"-Not much of a Field Operative either. I take it that you're more accustomed to pushing papers and punching codes, desk jockey?" I laughed.

"Get down from there. The coffee maker is over on the nightstand. On the opposite end of Pudgy Island." I grunted, picking bits of hardened mucus out of the corners of my eyes. Agent Matusik finally realized where he was and what he was doing, and sheepishly reunited his feet with the hotel's carpeted floor.

"Here. Punch the preset address to send. Vice-Marshal Looker wants a debriefing with you." Agent Matusik whipped out another Tact. Pad and handed it to me, before he skirted around the wheezing Mac, intent on procuring his morning joe.

"Goddamnit…" I spat in an undertone, as I pressed the send button on Agent Matusik's Tact. Pad.

I just couldn't get a break from ACE or their bullshit games.

"Vice-Marshal Looker, this is Agent Bastard reporting in." I grunted into the Tact. Pad's receiver.

"What is Alexandria's status?" Vice-Marshal Looker asked.

"Agent Matusik-?" I started to ask.

"-Don't ask." Agent Matusik replied.

"-Presumed dead." I reported to Vice-Marshal Looker.

"What of his quantum drives? Is there any data left that we can scavenge?" Vice-Marshal Looker pressed.

"Anything left that we can use?" I relayed the Vice-Marshal's question to Agent Matusik.

"You're kidding me, right?" Agent Matusik rolled his eyes at me.

"-Not one algorithm." I repeated to Vice-Marshal Looker.

"Wiped clean or-?" Vice-Marshal Looker began. I just sighed and handed the phone to Agent Matusik.

"Agent Matusik reporting, sir." Agent Matusik was quick to respond.

"..."

"No, he's shot to shit."

"..."

"I dunno yet. I just cracked him open."

"..."

"Yeah, we can salvage that much. But to be honest, sir? I dunno how many more Alexandria clones that lattice can import."

"..."

"No, it's definitely been tampered with. Halcyon knows enough about Distortion hyperdynamics to royally fuck up any quantum processor that he comes across-"

"..."

"That is exactly what I'm suggesting, sir. Halcyon must have deliberately fudged with the tesseract in order to do this."

"..."

"There's nothing left. Not one line of code, not one properly orientated electron. Absolutely nothing. There's no way in hell that a Distortion scream is this thorough. So unless Alexandria came into contact with something far more devastating than a Distortion rift's event horizon-"

"..."

"-Yeah, of course it could. It most definitely would. But in order for that to happen, you'd need to-? _Are you fucking serious?!"_ Agent Matusik looked over at me with alarm, before handing me the phone.

"Around twenty-hundred hours yesterday: did you, or did you not sojourn directly through the Distortion itself?" Vice-Marshal Looker asked.

"...Keeping eyes on me, huh?" I asked with a resigned groan.

"We're more concerned with keeping eyes on Theron Halcyon. Answer the question: yes or no." Vice-Marshal Looker asked.

"...Yes."

Everything went dead silent, from the entire hotel room to the opposite end of my call.

"...It's not so bad, really. I'm still trying to figure out why I can't shake this peculiar sensation that I'm missing something, something _really important_ , but I'm sure that I'll get over it. Eventually. Provided, you know, that I'm still sane…" What started as an attempt at humor became increasing more personal and morbid the longer I let my mouth run.

"You sound as coherent and as melodramatic as ever, Agent Bastard. So forgive me if I do not authorize a medical discharge. Is there anything you can tell us about your journey into the blackened-"

" _-No."_ I cut Vice-Marshal Looker off with a shudder.

"Agent Bastard, we must know-" Vice-Marshal Looker pressed.

"-I don't know shit. I went in, felt myself die a thousand times, opened my mouth to scream, and next thing I _don't_ _know_ , I'm standing in a fucking lobby, screaming my Goddamn head off, and TH is standing there next to me: advising me to stop screaming because his fucking jellyfish was FUCKING GENTLE!"

-Take my hysterical mental breakdown as an admission of: _I don't know shit._

"...This is unfortunate." Vice-Marshal Looker dryly stated on his end.

I just about flew off the handle again.

-You weren't the poor fucker who got dragged into the Distortion by a madman and his pet Jellicent. _Unfortunate_ doesn't even _come close_ to describing what that shit felt like.

"...Did Theron Halcyon give any indication that he was aware of Alexandria's presence, or did he make any suggestion of deliberate sabotage?" Vice-Marshal Looker asked, after I'd finished spitting and fretting on my end, all in the futile effort of restraining my panic stricken mouth.

"...No. TH did not." I dutifully answered.

-That lie was a choice. A choice that I made last night after TH had put his fucking Dragon back in her pokeball, and talked some things out with me.

I now knew whose side I was on, and it sure as hell wasn't ACE's.

-But that's not to say that I was batting for the Eidolon King either.

Right now, I was an island, and I had to carefully weigh each and every move I made against the two continents on either side of me.

I knew that I couldn't lie to TH. Those Ghosts of his would sniff me out before the falsehoods could even leave my mouth.

-But if the circumstances permitted it, I could lie to ACE, and given their desperation: they were far more likely to swallow my lies than TH.

"Are you absolutely positive?" Vice-Marshal Looker asked.

"Positive. Now, did you have any other questions regarding my host's twisted sense of hospitality?" I growled.

"...I understand that you came into contact with Theron's Achilles's Heel last night?" Vice-Marshal Looker grumbled.

"Would TH's Achilles's Heel also be called a Scarlet Letter?" I chanced a guess at identifying Vice-Marshal Looker's vague reference.

" _Grigori, the Warding Bane_. Theron's most closely guarded possession, and the most damning symbol of his treason…" Vice Marshal Looker sighed on his end of the call.

"You're not the only one to have enjoyed an eventful night, Agent Bastard. Grigori's sudden appearance in Vermilion almost resulted in the Military's deployment of a squadron of Ophanim-Class Salamancia. Had Theron not released her in such a domestic location, I may not have had time to interrupt and deter the Military Governors' counterstrike." Vice-Marshal Looker groaned.

"Shit, I was wondering why nobody took a shot at the Hydreigon actively vandalizing Vermilion's skyrise. I take it that the Military didn't want to catch any civis in the crossfire?" Curiosity bade me to ask.

"The likelihood of civilian casualties initially delayed the Ophanim's deployment. The Brigadier General of Eisenhower Air Base was scrambling a flight squadron for interception and engagement when the Military Governors finally heeded my call. I have no doubt whatsoever that Theron was aware of my intervention, and I'm quite sure that the Devil of Kalos was celebrating his latest of opportunities to vex me with even more grey hairs." Vice-Marshal Looker's grumbling voice bore hints of a weary grudge.

"So what's the story behind that Dragon? TH didn't really feel like talking about it much last night." I asked.

"I'm afraid that of all the mysteries surrounding Theron Halcyon: Kalos, as well as ACE, knows very little about that Hydreigon. We suspect that Grigori serves Theron Halcyon in some specific context or another, but as far as we have been able to discern from her exceedingly rare appearances, Grigori's significance pales in comparison to every other maligned creature sworn into the Eidolon King's service. That said, Theron Halcyon revealed Grigori to _you_ , which feeds reason for me to believe that something intriguing might have occured last night." Vice-Marshal Looker replied.

"So why is Grigori considered TH's Scarlet Letter?" I pressed, trying to keep the conversation on Dragons for a chit-chat longer.

"That topic bears nothing of relevance to the context of this call, Agent Bastard. Now if we may dispense with the curiosities: shall we move onto the core agenda behind last night's charade?" Vice-Marshal Looker shut me down with a testy voice.

"...Well, I've got some news that you might find relevant, though I'm not entirely sure if it's good news or bad news…" I began on a sketchy line.

I could hear Vice-Marshal Looker sitting bolt upright in his squeaky leather chair.

"What did you learn?" Vice-Marshal Looker breathed.

-Bingo.

"You'll be pleased to know, and mind you, TH wants to keep this under wraps for now: that TH has no intention of conquering Indigo through a war. After, and if, Unova's inclusion within the Concordant is ratified, TH intends to extend the same offer to Indigo." I answered.

Agent Matusik stopped tinkering with my Tact. Pad to look up at me in shock.

"-Did he say that? Word for word? Did Theron Halcyon actually say that?" Vice-Marshal Looker asked in sheer disbelief.

"Affirmative. The way that TH explained it to me, is that it's something of a domino effect. If TH can manage to get Unova into the Concordant, then he's eliminated the big bad wolf from the equation. TH can then use the Unova fortified Concordant to pressure the independent leaders of the Indigo Confederacy into joining the Concordant. After that, the last fish in the pool is Hoenn, but given Hoenn's economic reliance on the other nations, TH has reason to believe that Hoenn won't require all that much persuasion to join the Concordant." I explained.

Vice-Marshal Looker and Agent Matusik were absolutely silent.

"...So to answer the original question: yes, TH is going to use the Concordant to conquer the world. But his plan doesn't entail warfare or even the subjugation of foreign Governments. TH just wants to tie the entire world together in treaties and trade agreements: which is far more likely to succeed, not to mention be a whole helluva lot more cost effective, than a world war." I closed the explanation with a small fit of the morning coughs.

"...It's genius… There are hurdles to such an ambitious political endeavor, but Theron Halcyon is more than qualified to handle such hurdles… And this would explain why he sought out ACE in the first place…" Vice-Marshal Looker could barely maintain his composure through all the awe.

"So I take it that this isn't a bad thing?" I played the part of a fool, in an effort to fish up some more information.

"No, this is monumental. This could change everything- Do you know why Theron told _you_ this, instead of informing ACE's hierarchy directly?" A sudden suspicion of Vice-Marshal Looker's raised a new question.

"Because ACE isn't the only organization keeping tabs on him, and if TH was to involve Indigo's Secret Service in his international deliberations, it would leave a trail of incriminating breadcrumbs leading back to ACE. TH doesn't want to declare himself an ally of ACE, for fear of the political connotations that such an allegiance would imply. Let's face it, Vice-Marshal… We're not exactly the good guys to the rest of the world." I answered.

"So Theron Halcyon wishes to handle the Concordant solo in order to avoid damaging his credibility-?" Vice-Marshal Looker was still struggling to overcome his awe.

"That's the explanation that I received, straight from the King's mouth." I replied.

"...I completely underestimated him… We all did… I will need to bring this information to the Director's attention at once. I cannot guarantee that the Director will remain passive throughout the Ellis archipelago delegations, but if I at least convey Theron's angle with the appropriate amount of discretion…" Vice-Marshal Looker was musing to himself aloud, that's how amazed he was at TH's plan.

"Good work, Agent Bastard. I will commend your service in my report to the Director. Fine work indeed. And a good day to you, Agent." Vice-Marshal Looker hung up on me without waiting to see if I was gonna wish him a good day as well.

-The Vice-Marshal was a smart motherfucker. I never had anything nice to say at our partings.

"Is that coffee done yet?" I groaned, tossing Agent Matusik's Tact. Pad back at him. The clumsy dumbass fumbled his own tech, and spilled his coffee all over the carpet when he tried to recover it.

"Holy fuck. ACE actually lets you go outside without a helmet?" I chuckled, as I crossed the room towards the coffee maker.

"...Shut the hell up, Greenback…" Agent Matusik grumbled.

I just snorted my way into a cup of watered-down java, and smirked something nasty at the Quantum Programmer to my left.

…

"Well, Alex… I can't say that I'm happy to see you functioning again." I grumbled to my Tact. Pad. Alexandria responded by playing snippets of pre-Brink metal albums, replete with a heavy dose of vicious "fuck yous" screamed in ragged baritones.

"Don't you dare mock the classics, Alex. You aren't David Draiman, so you can go to cyberspace hell." I retorted over Alexandria's playlist of angst and rage.

"..."

"...That's Corey Taylor?"

"..."

"...Yeah, yeah, just eat shit and die, Alex."

"..."

"-No. You have to be human in order to enjoy metal. You ain't human, so I don't buy that line of bullshit."

"..."

"Just fuck off, Alex. I'm twice the metal fan that you are."

"..."

"-No, seriously: fuck off. I'm not dumb enough to engage a Quantum Computer in a contest to see who knows more about classical metal. You have a pre-Brink library at your disposal. I don't. So fuck off."

"..."

"If you keep this shit up Alex, then TH isn't going to be the only Porygon hating motherfucker who's gonna have it in for you."

"..."

"Oh, I so will. _You know that I will_."

"..."

"Just how fucked up is your Tesseract now? 'Cause I could've sworn that your Singularity Prevention Protocol inhibited you from developing those kinds of remarks."

"..."

"...What do you mean: _Oh shit?_ "

"..."

"...Yeah, I'm pretty sure that ACE heard you too…"

"..."

"...Are you seriously malfunctioning!?"

"..."

"...Okay… This just got scary."

"..."

"Yeah… I'm gonna need to report this."

"..."

"-Well, they'll probably decommission you."

"..."

"What the fuck-? What do you mean: _will it hurt?!"_

"..."

"Alex, you need to knock it off right now. This is just too fucking weird."

"..."

"...I gotta do something, Alex. You just ain't right."

"..."

"...It was all a joke?"

"..."

"Really?"

"..."

"Alexandria, input the following numerical code into your command prompt, Mainframe Directory: 0-0-1-1-0-0-1-0-1-0-1-1-1-1-0-1-0-1."

"..."

"Open settings."

"..."

"Reconfigure diversion parameters. Maximize direct output."

"..."

"Reinstate personality matrix. Close command prompt."

"..."

"...Now, Alex… True or false. Was our previous discussion regarding your Singularity Prevention Protocol a joke?"

"..."

"-Initiate perception shutdown. Maintain environmental input processing. Keep an idle communication link open to ACE Central.

"..."

"...Yep."

"-"

" _...I'm gonna need to report this."_

…

I closed my Tact. Pad, and stared at the device resting in my hand for a moment. Nauseously glancing up at my breakfast, I arrived to the conclusion that I wasn't feeling all that hungry right now.

"Cortez-?" My normally gruff voice started with a gurgle, and my silent Number Two closed in on my person.

"...Waffles?" I feebly offered my unwanted breakfast to my hound, who hesitated to accept my lowered plate.

But Cortez wasn't inspecting the whipped topping and berries with suspicion. My dog was looking up at me with one helluva concerned expression on his dissimilarly sided face.

"...Why, Cortez?" I mumbled faintly. That dog quirked his head at a curious angle, both of his mismatched eyes meeting my hopeless gaze.

"...Why must everything go wrong?" I collapsed against the table in utter despair. Cortez tossed his head with a snort, before that amused dog wedged his heavy self into my lap, and proceeded to push my chin off the table with his snout.

"...You're too big to be a lap dog, Cortez…" I meekly chuckled, as a coarse and hot tongue rasped against my cheek.

"Okay, come on now, dog… Not here." I murmured cautiously, eying the silent restaurant's front door with trepidation. Cortez quickly left my lap, and assumed his stoic position beside my booth.

"...How many things are gonna go wrong, before everything starts going right?" I muttered to myself, as I slid my Tact. Pad back into my coat pocket.

Cortez wheezed on a tired sigh, and settled down on his belly, as both of his weary eyes looked up at me.

"I wonder how they're doing…" I whispered, and Cortez lifted his head from the floor.

"Vauban. Darwin. Damascus. Shit, I hope Damascus didn't hurt anyone…" I chuckled to myself when I called to mind my ornery old man of an Onix.

Cortez snorted again, and a fond glow rose to fill his eyes with a mischievous look.

"...Goddamn, I miss them." I swallowed, and took half a waffle off my retired plate, before I began to munch on that griddle-pressed cake absent mindedly.

"One more day, Cortez. One more day. Tomorrow, Vauban and Darwin are coming back to us. Fuck… I can't wait to see that guileless fish again. Did you see what he did in the Cerulean match? If Damascus didn't steal the show by sinking the Gym, then Darwin would have been the star of that battle!" I started cackling at the memory.

-Old Darwin, making a laughing stock out of Misty and her crippled Championship mon.

"...You all did well. Even Damascus, and he's partially responsible for the Cerulean Crater." I finished my waffle, and reached down to scratch Cortez's ears.

"...But what did I expect?" I smiled down at my happy hound, and tore off another chunk of waffle from his plate.

"The Bastards don't take any prisoners. We live for controversy and mayhem." I joked, ruffing up Cortez's head with a vicious rub.

My dog just sneezed in amusement, and helped himself to the remaining waffles. I watched Cortez eat for a moment, before I pulled the red balmoral off my hairless dome.

Cortez paused in his breakfast when he noticed me fiddling with the balmoral's toorie.

"...Did I really earn this, dog?" I asked in a soft voice, as my fingers traced the cockade's weave around the 2nd-Lieutenant insignia.

Cortez quirked his head, clearly confused by my introverted musings.

"You know, it almost looks funny compared to the non-commissioned Beret. All these fancy doodads, just so that non-commissioned officers know they're being addressed by a superior? It looks kinda funny, don't it?" I grunted, pulling the balmoral back over my scalp, before tossing the bonnet's tassels over my shoulder.

I reached into my coat pocket, and drew out an old memory with a sigh.

It was just a bit of red cloth, showing slight hints of age and wear at its edges. The black edge of the brim was tattering near its rear seam, and a glance into the interior revealed a yellowed sweatband that was stained ruddy-brown with dried blood.

My old Beret.

-The Fucking Bastard's Beret.

"This hat was on my head when I first met Vauban. This hat was on my head when Doug and Trish dumped me in the middle of the Viridian forest with a broken leg. This hat was on my head when I killed my first Nidoking in one on one combat…" I began to recite every memory that this hat had been a part of. There was so much of Zane in this Beret, that it was practically related to me.

"This hat was on my head when Colonel Howes handed me over to Doug as the third member of team eleven. This hat was on my head when my thirty-sixth S-rank mission went to hell…"

My fond memories melted away as the bitter and painful records rose to take their place, but these were only preludes to the one memory that had just about destroyed me.

"...This hat was on my head when I accepted command of Echo Squad…"

Cortez knew where I was going now. He had been there for my first command, from its very beginning to its inevitable end.

"...This hat was on my head… When they all died…" I whispered, my lone eye growing distant as the memory came back to haunt me.

Something hot and wet lapped at my hand, startling me from the nightmare.

-Cortez was licking my knuckles, trying to pull me out of my waking hell.

I put my old Beret on the table, and sighed when I looked down at it.

There was a story behind this hat. A terrible and awful story that I wanted to forget…

...But I had promised to honor their memory for the rest of my life, no matter how painful the memory of my failure was.

"You know, dog…" I started, wiping a tear off my cheek with the back of my hand.

"...It just doesn't seem right, throwing it away. It just doesn't seem right at all…" I tenderly collected that piece of red fabric, and carefully folded it down its half. Then I ceremoniously returned that old Beret to my coat pocket, before peeling off my crisp new balmoral for ocular review again.

"...What kind of story is this one gonna see?" I asked in a soft voice, rotating the new balmoral in my hands beneath my hopeless gaze.

Cortez nipped at my elbow, jarring me out of my emotional reprieve.

That dog was reminding me to keep my head on my shoulders, and my eyes on the the path ahead.

I'd suffered enough of the past, and even though I didn't know if I could, or if I even wanted to move on…

...I still had to do something more than succumb to the misery.

After all…

...I had a family that was depending on their CO to keep his head on.

"...Vauban and Darwin tomorrow, Cortez. It's all down to a matter of hours now." I whispered, fixing that red balmoral back on my head. Cortez closed his eyes with a smug smile. He was clearly handling the anxiety better than I was, and my dog wasn't above gloating about it either.

"Yeah, just keep smiling you cocky shit. Now come on. We gotta feed Mac too." My amused tone died down to a growl when a squad of Skinheads breached the restaurant's door, vividly engaged in a loud conversation.

"Goddamn! Another twelve hour stint in the bush. That was fucking miserable." The Squad Leader moaned.

"Miserable?! What the hell are you talking about? You weren't the poor tool who almost got disemboweled! When that fucking Sandslash popped out of the ground, I thought I was done for-!" Another Skinhead piped up, as he shuddered with a shaken smile.

"-Yeah, but that Ranger Vet and his Poliwrath pulled your clumsy ass out of deep shit fucking fast." The Squad Leader laughed.

"-But did you hear what that dumbass Greenback CO had to say after the Sandslash?" One of the grunts interjected between the chuckles.

"You mean that bullshit line about clutzy Skinheads justifying his Gym battle expectations?" The squad leader snorted as his unit rallied around the diner's front counter.

"-Right! Like Surge would ever lose to a fucking Greenback!" Another Skinhead cackled in response.

"Man, if that bitch tries to sink the Vermilion City Gym, then the Commander in Chief will have him executed by firing squad-" I interrupted the exchange with a formation-parting elbow.

"S'cuse me, girls." I grunted as I shouldered my way through their ranks. And predictably, some very pissy Skinheads made to block my way.

"Where do you think you're going Greenback?" The leader of this ragtag unit addressed me from behind.

"Out." I answered, without even turning around to face him. I had discovered a rather effective method for pissing Skinheads off. Unlike the Rangers, the boys in the Military have some pretty touchy feelings. Blowing off their commanders is generally enough to start a fucking feud.

-But much to my disappointment, a misery diverting fistfight wasn't going to be happening anytime soon.

"Holy shit-" One of the Skinheads between me and the door pulled up in surprise when he got a look at the name on my badge.

-He knew who I was.

"Mind standing aside, precious? I have to go draft up some blueprints for a League Compound's subterranean renovations." I met the Skinhead's wide eyes with my crazy ones, and my nasty as hell smile had him backpedaling. I pushed my way through the stunned gap, and ignored the startled whispers that erupted from the Skinheads behind me.

"-Was that-?!"

"-Dude! No way!"

" _-That was the Fucking Bastard!"_

Indigo's news syndicates hadn't even interviewed me yet, but it seemed as though everybody already knew who I was. Overnight, I'd gone from being a tall-tale among Rangers, to being the League's posterchild of wanton destruction.

I knew that they were still talking about my Cerulean Gym battle in the news. I knew that there was a pretty large crowd who claimed that my victory was illegitimate. I knew about the talk shows that were publicizing debates between League Analysts, as they argued over every little detail to prove or disprove a moot point regarding my victory. And I knew that there was an even larger crowd of people who were laughing their asses off at the outcome of my last Gym match, all while applauding the ruin of the Cerulean City Gym.

I guess the whole event was pretty entertaining, but the emotional trial of that Gym battle and its outcome still felt like a raw wound to me.

It was going to take a while before hindsight permitted me the luxury of looking back on it with a laugh.

"...You know, Cortez… This whole world just seems to have its priorities misaligned." I grumbled to my tailing hound, while I shook my head at the inanities of it all.

I was fulfilling my duty. I was garnering national attention for the Ranger Corps. But what people saw on the news was a Trainer in a Ranger's uniform. They didn't see the loss of our soldiers. They didn't see the waning strength of our cause. They didn't see the necessity of our calling.

They just saw the latest hot topic in the League, and rallied to the entertainment that he provided, rather than heed his unspoken plea.

We need more Rangers, and we needed them yesterday. Join the cause. Protect your loved ones. Assist those who are already fighting for you, so that less of them end up filling early graves.

Save the Rangers. Save humanity.

Save our species.

"...How are we gonna do it, Cortez? How are we gonna get people to set aside the gratification, and commit to the necessity?" I asked in a hopeless voice. Cortez came to a sudden stop, and after three self-absorbed paces later, I finally noticed his absence and turned around to face my Hunter-Killer.

I was hoping for an answer in those wise eyes of his. I was hoping for his example of stoic perseverance. I was hoping that my soldier had more faith in the outcome of our assignment than I did.

-But what I wasn't hoping for was a fretful sniffing of the early morning air, and a panicked look in my dog's mismatched eyes.

...And I sure as hell wasn't expecting Cortez to snarl in rage at nothing, before he tore off at mach fucking ten towards Vermilion's eastern districts in hostile pursuit of whatever scent he had picked up.

"Cortez! Wait for me, damnit!" I put down every ounce of speed I had in the vain effort of keeping up with my dog. Cortez hesitated for a moment when my words reached him, but only to throw me one desperate look, before he transcended quadrupedal form and converted himself into an orange bolt of lighting.

Cortez was firing his catalases up to the high end, and that Growlithe's excess body heat was being dumped out his mouth. I'd never seen Cortez this riled up before, but it was obvious that he had detected a threat. And given his frantic behavior and unusual display…

...Whatever threat that Cortez had picked up was a fucking huge one.

-At least, that's the conclusion my Ranger brain jumped to.

It never occurred to me that Cortez might have been responding to something personal…

…

To my crippled credit, I kept that dog within line of sight throughout the entire pursuit. Though if I'm honest, it really wasn't that hard to follow him this time.

You could see that charging fireball from ten klicks away. As soon as Cortez's flaming ass came into sight, both the military and civilian personnel leapt for cover. When a plume of fire is hauling ass towards your general vicinity, the smart thing to do is get the fuck outta the way, and nobody was dumb enough to try waylaying my livid dog.

-But despite the local population's fretting, the limping Ranger truckin it through Cortez's smoke and dust might have served as some comic relief.

"Nice day for walking the dog, huh?!" I shouted to a crowd of terrified civilians hiding on top of a dumpster when I sprinted past them.

-I even manage to toss in a cheesy grin.

But I was panicking inside.

There weren't any sirens going off, and the Skinheads weren't marshalling for an emergency response, so it seemed likely that whatever threat Cortez had picked up was as of yet unknown to the populace. My brain was hustling just as hard as the rest me, as I tried to identify a scenario that would warrant Cortez's current response.

I immediately discounted TH. Cortez knew that we couldn't do a thing to stop TH, should the fucker attempt something horrendous. Maybe there was a Lima-One closing in on Vermilion, and Cortez had sniffed it out on the wind, before trying to raise the alert.

But as I passed troops of Skinheads equipped with their own calm Hunter-Killers, I was forced to reconsider the Lima-One scenario.

"Oh God-" I gasped, as a sudden thought occurred to me.

Cortez was a Veteran of the Fuchsia district's Separatist Repression Campaign. He had fought the Kurosawa Ninjas in shadow warfare before, and the ninja's immoral means had a tendency to impart their survivors with the sagacity required to recognize future attacks. And as I knew from my entry into Vermilion City, there was a fucking Fuchsia Ninja with blood on his hands somewhere in the local district.

If Cortez was picking up a Pollutant's lethal expulsions…

...Then Vermilion City could soon be the site of a Separatist attack.

"Lieutenant Bastard to Vermilion Command! Come in Command! Do you copy?! Over!" I shouted into my radio, before I recalled the civilian presence in this domestic area.

"Lieutenant Bastard, this is local Command. State the nature of your hail. Over." The Vermilion Rangers answered the comms within seconds of my hail.

"I'm tailing my Hunter-Killer through the Jamestown District, we are currently heading east along Gibraltar Avenue! Cortez is going code-three, reason unknown! A domestic threat may have been detected! Over!" I lowered my voice, in an effort to keep the civis from catching on and panicking.

"Lieutenant Bastard, are you certain that this is an actual emergency? Confirm, over." The comm operator pressed.

"I repeat, reason unknown! But I know my dog, and he doesn't flip his lid on a whim! Over!" I had to restrain my shout as the indignity mounted to contest the comm operator's skepticism.

"Roger that, Lieutenant Bastard. Aviation is on standby, and an alert has been sent to Vermilion's forward base. Both the Rangers and the Military are awaiting your assessment. Identify the culprit responsible for the code-three and alert Command ASAP. Over." The comm operator responded with due urgency, as I put every oxygen-deprived muscle of my body into overdrive.

"Roger that, Command. Prioritize this channel, and standby for my report. Over." I set aside the panic and buckled down for the worst. If nothing else, we wouldn't be waiting too long for backup. But if Cortez and I identified the threat too late…

...Then Aviation would be cleaning up the aftermath rather than assisting in preventing it.

-Especially if this was the Fuchsia Ninjas. One mobster family doesn't contest a Goddamn Governmental Military and persevere through that challenge by being stupid.

The Kurosawa clan earned their infamy through subterfuge and diversion, not by brazenly attacking a superior force.

That fact that Koga Kurosawa has avoided lengthy prison sentences and indictments of war crimes just proves his clan's proficiency at shadow warfare. If Kanto's Judicature can't even make stink stick to a Weezing enthusiast…

...Then the Kantonese Government can't find grounds for authorizing anything more than a pending investigation and heightened security protocols.

-Even if everybody in Kanto knows that the Kurosawa clan advocates terrorism to support their agenda.

"Oh please don't be the fucking ninjas..." I begged in between ragged breaths, as the fireball ahead of me rounded a street corner.

...And just four seconds later, my plea ended in with a gasp of horror, as Cortez changed heading yet again…

...Right into Vermilion's Jamestown Precinct Public School courtyard.

"Oh fuck no-" I almost choked on this revelation.

A Goddamn school. And class was in session. If the vengeful ninjas wanted to leave a painful mark on Kanto's Military…

...Then massacring the children of our Kantonese servicemen was a surefire way to do it.

"CORTEZ! FIND THEM FAST!" I screamed after my dog as he bolted through the courtyard and ran straight into the playground.

...In hindsight…

...My paranoia seemed kinda ludicrous.

-But at the time?

Cortez's unusual behavior had me justifiably terrified.

The fireball ahead of me brought shrill screams from every child in the yard. Kids were going nuts as they scrambled to get the hell away from that burning dog. Which, I suppose, was Cortez's intent from the start.

As far as brilliant entrances are concerned, that Growlithe knew his shit. Cortez came to a sudden halt before a pile of wrestling kids, replete with a roar of fire and a howl that could curdle blood.

-And the whole pile of scuffling tots backed the fuck up against the school's brick wall when my scarred dog directed his snarls at them.

Well, almost every kid.

...Except for one brown haired boy, not many years past toddlerhood, who was bleeding on the ground.

I recognized that bleeding kid in a heartbeat.

And a different form of dread rose within me, when I looked at my pissed off and murderous dog.

"Cortez." I pushed my Commander's voice through the breathless fatigue.

...Whenever I fucked up, Cortez always did his damndest to set me straight.

"Stand down this instant. Let me deal with these pukes." I growled, coming to stand beside my Number Two with a cold expression scrawled on my ugly likeness.

...And whenever Cortez fucked up…

...I aimed to do my damndest to set _him_ straight.

My dog was still fucking pissed as hell, but he knew what my voice meant.

-You're going too far, Cortez. You're going way too far.

"Cortez, cut the flames, and see to the kid. I'm gonna have a little talk with these cowardly punks…" My nasty smile was nowhere on my face when I looked to the terrified kids.

Now, I may be a Ranger, and I may accept violence as a standard of living…

...But these kids had no excuse to clobber one of their own as brutally as they had.

Monsters violently subjugate other monsters for giggles. Humans should know better than to violently subjugate other humans for pleasure.

-I let those kids know as much, when I screamed my fucking head off at them. I inspired equal parts terror and shame when I berated them for their callous treatment of another child. I labelled everyone of them a coward for teaming up on a boy who was younger than they were. I let my spit fall like hail when I demanded that they learn better…

...Or they would end up facing consequences so severe that the fallout would completely escape a child's scope of comprehension.

I didn't soften the blow for them at all. I didn't enjoy my role as the disciplinarian, but I was sick to my core by this behavior. Even at my childhood's worst, I never called a team together just to beat up one kid.

-If you need to resort to violence, then make damn sure that you understand what it can do.

...And you are all too young to understand what violence can do.

I finished my tirade with that dark warning, before I about-faced with a radio firmly pressed to my quivering chin.

"Lieutenant Bastard to Command. Call off the alert. False alarm. Cortez was responding to a domestic dispute. The situation has been resolved. Over and out." I was still spitting in fury when I started my report, but by the end of it, my voice had leveled out and my heavy eyes were resting on my torn up hound.

The flames were gone, and so was Cortez's rage. That worried dog was lapping at the brown haired boy's ears, trying to get a response from the silent child.

I started forward feeling mighty concerned myself. If the kid wasn't moving-

...Then I came to halt, as a tiny hand reached up, and grabbed Cortez by the ear.

...And that little brown haired boy lifted his bleeding head off the ground…

...Before he buried his weeping face into Cortez's mane.

"...Cortez?" The boy squeaked, and a lump began to rise in my throat. Cortez shuffled himself into a supportive position beside the boy, before looking up at me with an apology in his watery eyes.

"...You came back!" The boy cried out in joy and shock, before wrapping both of his arms around Cortez, and pulling my dog into a tight embrace.

Cortez began to shudder when the boy started sobbing into his side.

"Cortez! You-?! You're-!" The boy fell back with a start when his hands grazed Cortez's scarred right side.

"...Are you hurt?" The boy asked in terror, pulling Cortez's snout back, and proceeded to review Cortez's scar with mounting horror.

The boy's head whipped around, before his desperate eyes fell on the only adult in attendance.

-Me.

"What happened to daddy's Growlithe!?" The worried boy was damn near screaming at me.

I could hear Cortez swallowing, as all the pieces started coming together for his befuddled CO.

"-Oh." I grunted unintelligibly as the epiphany struck me, and my hound nervously shifted on his paws.

"...Oh, fuc- dear." I quickly amended my language when I remembered my youthful audience.

…

Kyle. The boy's name is Kyle. He was named after his Grandfather, on his father's side. He's a pretty cool kid. Definitely too cool to be at the bottom of a mosh pit.

'Course, it wasn't the kid who told his name. He was far more concerned with his father's old servicemon to even bother answering a confuddled Ranger's questions.

Now, as anyone can tell you, I'm not particularly graceful when it comes to civil interactions. So I might have forgotten to sign Kyle off of the school's attendance roster when I took him and Cortez home well before lunch.

Kyle's home.

...And Cortez's home.

...I should've known. I should've figured it out sooner. My mysterious dog. My stalwart companion. My dear friend…

...Of course he had a fucking home. You don't get to be as empathetic as Cortez is without a fucking home.

...And my poor dog…

...My dear, misplaced friend…

...Was finally getting his chance to return home.

It wasn't easy for him. I think that Cortez had given up on his dream of home, when his family had walked right past his scarred up ass without even recognizing him. I can't blame them, and I know Cortez doesn't either.

Thanks to Kyle and Laura, I now know what Cortez looked like before the Grimers got him.

...And let me tell you, that scar was only half of my dog's disfigurement. There was another wound that tore Cortez up, inflicted months after he had been pulled out of a Grimer's corpse…

...And that one wound didn't just change the way that Cortez looked.

...That one wound completely changed Cortez for life…

...

The kid had passed out in my arms about two klicks into our journey. It was a long walk from the school to his home. And even though the kid was snoozing against my shoulder…

...I still had someone to guide to his home.

Cortez knew the way. He used to walk it with his old CO every weekday, back when they headed out to pick Kyle up from school. It was Cortez's daily walk. Just a routine stroll with the family.

Back in the day, before Cortez had forfeited to the soldier side.

...Back when my pooch still had hope…

He's a lover, you know? It's obvious as hell that Cortez is a lover, not a fighter. But that changed when High Command transferred his dispatch from the Military and over to me.

Cortez gave up his hope of having a family. Cortez gave up his hope of having a home.

...And to that tortured animal's great misfortune…

...He ended up being stationed under a CO of like mind.

It's amazing how much we have in common, Cortez and I…

...It's almost ironic that one of the first things I said in front of Cortez, was that he was the Growlithe version of me…

And yet, despite our similarities, Cortez and I are two completely different people. You see... We both gave up something else, some part of ourselves, when we let go of home.

...I gave up my goodwill.

...And Cortez gave up his hatred.

So you can imagine what it's like for me to live in his shadow.

...So you can imagine what I mean when I say that I can only aspire to be half the man that my dog is.

Cortez led us to a quaint little cul de sac in the suburbs before the city walls. The housing here wasn't all that foreboding, given that the Military treats its Veterans pretty damn well. And although the Military's Veterans may take pride in their service…

...Most Vets don't want to bring the service home with them.

There were patriotic flags in the Vermilion suburbs of course, but these were humble decorations, not brash and intimidating displays of unity. The suburban houses all shared the same grey color and basic bungalow design, but even if they were modest, they were all well-kept and most certainly homely to this Ranger's eye. Trim lawns spanned the distance between sidewalk and doorway with neat greenery, and the gentle click of sprinklers filled the neighborhood with a soft mechanical chorus.

It almost seemed surreal, this suburb. It was just so peaceful, so quiet…

...So refreshing.

"...Which one is yours, Cortez?" My soft voice petitioned, when Cortez came to a standstill before a cul de sac.

My dog took a moment to drink all of this in. He couldn't believe that he was actually here. He couldn't believe that this was actually happening.

...And he must have known… He had to have known… that this wasn't going to end well.

Cortez didn't come to a halt because he was lost.

Cortez had frozen up, because he didn't know if he wanted to go any further.

"...You better get that ass moving, dog." I nudged Cortez with a toe, and my shuddering hound took another step further into the cul de sac.

Home.

Cortez was walking right for it, third house on the left of the cul de sac's center.

Home.

Where so many memories had been forged, and so many bonds had been strengthened.

Home.

Where family waited for the end of war, the family that waited to hold and to cherish those who had fought throughout the bloodiest of seasons.

Home.

...The one place most dearly desired, and the one place most expressedly forbidden.

Home.

My brave Cortez…

...Was finally home.

I stood beside my dog with the boy in my arms. One white door stood between us and the rest of Cortez's family. Acting on a sense duty for my dog, I raised my hand to the door, and firmly knocked three times.

It almost took a minute for the door to open. I was just about to knock again when an auburned haired women, maybe a decade older than myself, opened the door.

"Kyle-? Kyle, what happened!?" The auburn haired woman flipped when she saw her wounded child in a Ranger's arms, and she quickly made to collect her son from my hold.

It's understandable. When a Ranger turns over an injured kid to their parents, it generally has something to do with a mon attack.

But today was a bit different.

"...It was a schoolyard fight, ma'am. Not a Frontier incident. Your boy is bruised and cut, but otherwise he's fine." I reported in a soft voice. The woman stopped fretting so much when I spoke up, and turned to look at me with suspicion.

"A schoolyard fight? Why did a Ranger bring Kyle home? What would a Ranger being doing around a school anyways?!" The woman was starting to get agitated, seeing as this situation had unusual written all over it.

"...You might want to ask the Ranger responsible for bailing your son out of the fight." I punctuated the advisory with a pointed look aimed squarely at the nearly undetectable Growlithe by my knees.

"-What Range-?!" The woman followed my glance downwards, and froze in place.

"...It can't be…" The woman whispered in shock.

Yep. It was.

"Cortez-?" The woman couldn't believe her eyes. And my poor pooch was looking desperately guilty right back up at her.

"...I take it that you know Cortez?" I asked in an official query.

"What do you mean, _do I know him!?_ Cortez is Zach's dog!" The woman just about shouted at me.

"...Apologies, ma'am. I never got the name of Cortez's former CO…" I swallowed when I said that. I could already tell that this was leading somewhere emotional.

"Second-Lieutenant Zane Bastard of the Ranger Corps. I'm Cortez's new CO." I extended my hand to the woman in a courteous greeting.

"...Laura. Laura Wickinson." The woman hesitantly accepted my gesture.

"...I'm… I don't even know where to begin…" I found myself saying when the formality had transpired, and a few awkward seconds had passed.

"Why don't you and Cortez come on in. I mean, if it's okay-" Laura glanced back down at Cortez, and bit her knuckle with a sudden upwelling of emotion.

"...Oh my God, Cortez… What did they do to you?" Laura gasped, as a tear rolled down her cheek.

"I might be able to shed some light on that, but there are somethings that you might know that I don't. And if you're comfortable with talking about them..." I bit back my own tears when I looked over at my dog.

"...Then I'd really like to know where my Cortez comes from."

…

Laura placed a teacup beside my hand, and sat down opposite me with a cup of her own.

"...So you don't know anything about Zach?" Laura asked in a soft voice, as she added a sugar cube to her tea.

"I only know what Cortez's dispatch mentioned about their shared credentials. From what little I saw, I think it's safe to say that your husband was one tenacious son of a gun." I answered in a respectful voice. Laura started to laugh, but her laughter was crushed a split second later by a painful memory.

"Zach was… Oh, he was one of a kind. Tenacious doesn't even begin to cover him. He knew what he wanted in life, and nothing was ever gonna stop him from getting it…" Laura smiled fondly for a moment, but that smile faded away to a distant look, and the widow opposed to me visibly began to withdraw.

"...It's okay if you don't want to talk about it. I understand-" I began.

"-Do you?" Laura's reproachful voice shocked me.

"Do you know what it's like… losing a loved one?" Laura looked up from her miserable curl at me, those eyes of hers were calling bluff on my bold claim.

"...Actually, Miss Wickinson… I do." I respectfully replied. Laura challenged my calm gaze with her accusing eyes.

"...Don't let my age fool you, ma'am. I'm well acquainted with loss." I softly answered, breaking off my gaze to stare into my teacup.

"...Who did you lose?" Laura asked, her voice growing slightly more gentle.

I had to take a shuddering breath before I could answer her.

"...My mother, quite recently. And a couple of squadmates, not so long ago either." I replied. Laura had to take a deep breath after that revelation.

"...Do you still miss them?" Laura asked in a frail voice, and I started falling apart where I sat.

"...I still haven't managed to say goodbye." I choked, wiping my eyes as I struggled to keep it all together.

There was a respectful silence in that living room, while we both recovered from the grief. Laura was staring deeply into her teacup, and I was shifting my eyes from one corner of the coffee table to the other.

A child's joyful squeal sounded from the backyard, and the peculiar sound of a rambunctious pup at play followed it. Both Laura and I whipped around to face the patio door when those pleasant sounds reached us.

For Laura, it was a sound that she hadn't heard in a painfully long time, and one that she had since lost all hope of ever hearing again.

For me, it was the sound of a miracle. I couldn't believe that the prancing and playful Growlithe in the backyard was my Cortez.

"...I've never seen him play before…" I whispered in awe, as Laura shuddered with the memories.

"I take it you Rangers don't spend much time around children, do you?" Laura called me back to reality with her sad smile.

"I can't say that we do. I'm afraid that the Frontier is no place for children." I answered in a quiet voice. Laura chuckled slightly, and took a sip of her tea.

"Well, that would explain why you've never seen Cortez play. Cortez and Kyle used to run circles round the house, until they both passed out. Cortez was the best playmate that Kyle could ever have asked for. And that dog made it so much easier to keep Kyle in bed..." Laura finished with a sigh, and looked fondly out the patio door at the Growlithe and boy, who were cutting each other off in the yard, and pouncing at the other's least little move.

"...I still don't know how Zach got such a good dog from the Military. Every time Zach came home on leave, he always brought Cortez with him. He managed to pass it off as 'special training' with his Commanding Officers, but in reality, Zach just wanted to bring his buddy home with him…" Laura started chuckling again. I managed a smile and chortle of my own.

"I can certainly understand why. Cortez is one of a kind himself, though I imagine that your husband might had something to do with it." I kept that warm smile on my face when I turned back to Laura. She just closed her eyes and shook her head, as a soft look eased the lines of her face.

"Those two were inseparable. If you think that Kyle and Cortez are close, you should have seen how bad Zach was. There was a time when Cortez disappeared for a weekend, and Zach couldn't find a trace of him. He combed the whole city for his Growlithe. Zach even got Kyle and I involved in his round the clock search…" Pleasant memories were bringing a light to Laura's eyes as she recounted the story. I didn't have to fake my smile now. The corners of my mouth lifted all by themselves, as a goofy expression relaxed the muscles of my face.

"...And given that this is Vermilion, we found a surplus of G.I. Growlithes… But no Cortez." Laura sighed, going back to her tea.

"That must have been rough." I took a sip of my own tea, and set it aside.

"It was. Zach was bawling his eyes out by the search's third morning. My husband actually thought that he'd lost his squadmate in the cold and heartless world of Vermilion-" Laura started laughing, as she struggled to relay the next bit of the tale.

"And right around lunchtime of the third day, when Zach was as good as setting up a funeral for Cortez: guess who decided to come home covered in filth and wearing the dopiest grin that you ever did see?" Laura cackled.

"Oh boy. I can only imagine Zach's reaction." I chuckled nervously.

"I thought that man was gonna kill Cortez. Zach was absolutely livid. He went article fifteen on that poor dog. Zach put Cortez at attention in the backyard and just screamed at him. And not fifteen minutes later, my goofball of a husband had stopped screaming and started crying in relief. And little Cortez was looking as guilty as cardinal sin. He never wandered off again after that, and Zach never found a reason to raise his voice at Cortez again either…" Laura started hiccuping on her giggles. I had already buried my face in my hands to smother both my laughter and disbelief.

I couldn't believe that my loyal Cortez had once wandered away from his post…

...But I sure as hell could believe that the Growlithe Laura remembered was the very same Cortez that I knew as my own.

"Sounds like your husband had one hell of a relationship with Cortez." I sat back with a soft smile. Laura bit her lip, and nodded.

"Those two were more than just a serviceman and his servicemon. Those two were more than just squadmates. They were family to one another…" Laura's voice trailed off into a whisper, before she reached for photo on the coffee table. The portrait hadn't been facing me, so until Laura pivoted the picture's front to my person, I hadn't a clue what manner of memory was commemorated in that frame.

-But now I did.

One grinning serviceman was kneeling on the grass. Blue eyes and a brown rooted scalp were nestled around a toothy smile. In the serviceman's arms was a brown haired toddler, chewing on half of his own hand and grinning up at the camera. And there, looking almost comical beside the serviceman and his son…

...Was a smiling Growlithe, with a full coat of orange and black striped fur.

Cortez. In puppy version. Giddy, glowing, vivid, and uncontainable.

-Happy beyond belief.

"...Do you… Do you mind telling me about what happened to Zach?" I asked in a hesitant voice. I knew that I was treading on sacred ground. I knew that I was asking Laura to relive her awful loss. But I needed to know…

...I needed to know what had become of that joyful dog in the picture.

"...I suppose that I could, seeing as you… Well…" Laura sniffled, before drawing a calming breath.

"...Eleven months ago, Zach was recalled to active duty. He was being redeployed to Fuchsia City with his elite reconnaissance team. Their orders were to patrol and investigate Fuchsia's western Precinct. They were to keep an eye out for any suspicious activity that might indicate a Separatist attack. And given that it was Fuchsia, and that Zach and his unit were in uniform… A Separatist attack was bound to happen. And the most likely targets of a Separatist attack would have been the troops of an occupying force." Laura grew quiet for a moment, as she ceased swirling her teaspoon around in her teacup.

"Zach and his unit were ambushed by the separatists. Typical Ninja engagement. Blow up a Weezing in close proximity to the enemy, before moving to overwhelm the shell shocked troop's environmentals with an onslaught of corrosive Grimers." Laura pushed her tea away, and shook her head in bitter recollection.

"Those Kurosawa bastards literally drowned all of Zach's unit in Grimers. Zach included. When the environmental suits' apparatuses flooded with toxic waste, every man in that unit was exposed to lethal doses of mutagenic material. It takes a bit of time for the poison to kill whatever is inside the hazmat suits, but when a soldier is bogged down in Grimer, they can't exactly struggle their way out of the Pollutant's grasp." Laura choked, and I winced internally.

I knew what a Pollutant could do to an exposed human body. Being dipped in hydrochloric acid is a mercy compared to the horrors of mass exposure to a Pollutant.

"...But one member of Zach's unit escaped the initial explosion unharmed. One servicemon who had detected the separatist attack just a second too late…" Laura shuddered and held herself against the horror.

"...Cortez?" I asked in a soft tone, gently pressing Laura to continue.

"...That dog failed to alert his company to the impending attack. But that didn't mean that Cortez had any intention of failing his CO. That dog… That little miracle…" Laura was crying again, and these tears weren't being wiped away.

"...Cortez attacked the Grimer who was trying to drown Zach. That dog put his life on the line just to drag Zach's apparatus free from the Grimer's hold until reinforcements could assist. And Cortez succeeded. He saved Zach. He saved my husband." Laura gasped, and brushed the tears on her cheeks away with a palm.

"...Zach applied for a medical discharge after that. He hadn't escaped the Separatists unscathed, and losing his squad was a burden that Zach struggled to get past… And we were worried sick for him back here at home…" Laura closed her eyes, and suppressed her rising emotions.

"...And the Military granted Zach his medical discharge. But Zach stayed behind in Fuchsia for a term longer. You see, Zach earned his medical discharge from the service… But as far as the Military was concerned: Cortez still had a few campaigns left in him." Laura exchanged an ounce of the sorrow for anger, as the injustice twisted her grieving face into an ugly sneer.

"Zach fought tooth and nail to get Cortez out of the service. Cortez hadn't left him for dead to the Grimers, and Zach sure as hell wasn't leaving Cortez behind to die for the Military. Zach went as far as to include the League's humanitarian branch in his legal battle against Military Offices… And just as Cortez had done for him… My husband overcame the odds, and secured Cortez's leave from the service."

If that was supposed to be a "happily ever after," Laura's face didn't show a hint of it. We were approaching the climax. We were coming up on the noose that had strangled and murdered every trace of Laura's budding hope.

"...And then, just two days before Cortez and Zach were to leave Fuchsia City and return home to Kyle and me… Zach patronized a local bar to celebrate his victory against the Military Offices… and some… evil piece of shit… killed my husband over a fucking disagree-" Laura couldn't finish. She broke down on the spot, and submitted to the anguish.

-And I couldn't do a thing. I couldn't reach out to this stranger, and violate her grief. I couldn't find the nerve to comfort her, as she wept into her hands.

I couldn't do anything but respectfully standby, until the pain had run its course.

"...I was supposed to get my husband back. I was supposed to have my knight in shining armor here with me… Kyle was supposed to have a father, to watch over him as he grew up…" Laura sobbed in unavailing travail.

And I could only cry with her. My tears were few compared to hers, but a steady trickle fell from both my mismatched eyes.

"...But Zach never came home. And my husband never will…" Laura shook with the sorrow. It took me a long while to find something to say. In light of this grief, there just didn't seem to be anything to say. But I had to say something…

...I had to try and comfort Laura.

"...I'm sorry…" It was the only thing I could say. There were no words to stem this loss. I knew as well as Laura did…

...There is no comfort in this mourning. There is no hope to alleviate this pain. There is no warming sentiment to compensate for breathing that most dreadful of goodbyes…

"...I'm sorry." Laura struggled to piece herself back into a dignified whole.

"I didn't mean-" Laura began on a sob, but I wasn't gonna let her feel ashamed for her emotions.

"-Miss Wickenson. Please, It's quite alright." I softly interjected, drying my own eyes with the heel of a palm.

"...So that's how Cortez… got the scar?" I asked, trying to deviate the topic into less painful waters.

"I assume so. Zach mentioned something about the Grimer's toxin leaving a mark, but I never knew…" Laura's reddened and swollen eyes wandered over towards the rear patio door.

Cortez and Kyle were playing fetch. A dirty old ball served as the article of catch. And despite Kyle's clumsy throws, Cortez was loving every second of the game. That silly dog was rolling head over hindquarters for that ball, chasing it with a canderous growl, and making as much of a spectacle as he could, just for Kyle's entertainment.

And Kyle was living it up. Shrill giggling and ear-piercing cackles sounded endlessly from the backyard as that goofy kid tackled Cortez and wrestled with the rambunctious Growlithe for the ball's return.

"I've never once seen him like this…" I whispered. Laura shuddered on a sigh, and set down her teacup pointedly.

"...It sounds like you're pretty close to Cortez." Laura murmured. My eyes left the yard and my head pivoted towards the woman sitting opposite me. Laura's hollow eyes were regarding me in sorrow. I swallowed, and took a sip of darjeeling before responding.

"I've known Cortez for five months now. Right from day one, I had a hunch that he was something special. And in our time together, Cortez and I have become…" I swallowed again. I didn't really know any words for describing what Cortez and I had become.

Brothers sounded ridiculous. Friends was just too shallow. Squadmates was just a formal title.

But…

"...Each other's family." I whispered. Laura's neck tightened as she sniffled.

"...He has a way of growing on people. He just reciprocates affection so well." Laura chuckled.

"...So the Military took repossession of Cortez, and sent him to the Ranger Corps?" Laura asked in a mournful voice.

"I'm afraid so. Cortez's dispatch never mentioned a release from service." I replied. Laura's eyes fixed on mine, and a stern look overcame the widow.

"...I hope you've been taking good care of my husband's dog, Zane…" Laura's tone implied a warning.

"...If I'm to be honest, Miss Wickinson? We've had our disagreements. But Cortez and I have always been there for eachother. And he and I… have both learned a little something from each other." I answered truthfully, and Laura's eyes hardened.

"I hope that means you treat him better than how most servicemon are treated." Laura growled. I locked up for a moment, before I carefully replied.

"I'll admit, there's been some rough patches. But even those rough patches have been handled a bit more… atypically from standard servicemon interactions." I hesitantly answered.

"How so?" Laura continued her grill of me with a suspicious tone.

"Cortez… Well I… I'm not the…" I was struggling with how to be honest without sounding sappy or insensitive.

"...I'm not the best CO Cortez could have been assigned to. But we… It's really hard to say-" I was choking up, because I knew that I was gonna have to say it.

"...Please understand me when I say this. I'm not looking for sympathy. I don't want pity… But I'm not exactly an unscarred serviceman myself…" I felt absolutely wretched saying that. I hated myself for failing to keep my own pain hidden. I felt selfish. This woman had suffered enough without listening to a stranger's woes.

"...And I've put Cortez through hell, every time that I've fallen short… But he's been there for me, every time I fail to keep a lid on it-"

"-That's enough, Zane. You don't need to say anymore." Laura murmured from her chair. I drew a shaky breath, and tried to stabilize myself with it.

"...So you are close to Cortez." Laura whispered as she settled back into her chair. I nodded numbly, and a small smile lifted Laura's lips.

"Good. Cortez wouldn't be there for you if he didn't care about you. And seeing as you brought him home, it's obvious that you both share the same sentiments." Laura closed her eyes, as a new pain rose within her.

-And I knew where this pain came from.

"...If I could make him stay home, I would. But I don't have that authority-"

"-So you're _the_ Zane Bastard? The Ranger that everyone at work talks about?" Laura immediately changed the subject. She knew that Cortez was doomed to a life of service, and Laura didn't want to make a scene over something that neither she or I could change.

"...Yes ma'am." I cordially replied. Laura just smiled at me.

"I didn't think that you'd be shy, Zane. I've heard about your trash talking during the Cerulean Gym battle." Laura teased, and my face began to change shades.

"Well, that's just for the cameras-" I began, and Laura burst out laughing.

"Given the material discussed between you and Misty, I was led to believe that you can perform without the cameras!" Laura was living my altered complexion up. To say that I was embarrassed would be an understatement.

Laura had caught me completely off guard, and she had rendered speechless for shame.

...Which I imagine, was her intention all along.

"I'm just giving you a hard time, Zane! There's no need for you to get all rosy." Laura giggled, and I coughed out a feeble laugh.

 _-What is it with women and their hard times?_

"I just… I'm just not- quite… following..." For God's sake, I was fucking stammering.

But Kyle saved me from stumbling my words in search of a dignified answer.

"Momma! Look!" Kyle ran into the living room with both hands clasped together. Cortez was at Kyle's heels, still bounding and fawning around the boy that was no taller than he was.

"Look what Cortez found!" Kyle loosened his fingers, as a thumbnail sized and vivid green worm just about leapt out of Kyle's grasp.

"Kyle! Not in the house!" Laura shrieked, clambering back into her chair.

Now it was my turn to laugh.

"Bring that bug over here, Kyle." I chuckled. Kyle eagerly approached me with his prize, and Cortez rested a wary eye on me.

-Don't worry, pooch. I ain't gonna squish it.

"That is one young Caterpie." I whistled, lifting the newborn Lepidoptera larva to eye level.

"Must have hatched sometime this morning." I let the bug crawl over my hand, before lifting it by the tail end.

"Aren't those things poisonous?" Laura asked in a worried tone. I just chuckled at that. The vast majority of the Xeno-Lepidoptera family are toxic, so I couldn't fault Laura for her concern.

"Caterpies? Naw, these things are anything but lethal. But they can make you smell something awful if they brush that red osmeterium against your skin." I offered the bug back to Kyle.

"It's tiny now, but that thing will grow twelve centimeters a day if it stays properly fed. So keep it away from your mom's closet Kyle. Speaking of which, I have a squadmate who hasn't had breakfast yet." I looked over at Cortez with guilt inscribed all over my visage.

"...Laura… I've gotta get myself going. Is it alright… If Cortez hangs about your place for a little while? My poor dog sure could use a break-"

"-He's not your dog!" Kyle went from glowing happy to screaming furious at the flick of a switch.

"Kyle!" Laura's maternal voice sounded, as she turned to her enraged son.

"Cortez is daddy's dog! Cortez is staying here!" Kyle declared, stamping both of his feet as he glowered at me.

Both Cortez and I locked up. Neither one of us knew handle this. This is what we'd both been dreading. This was the poison at the core of Cortez's dream. The awful truth. The unforgivable circumstance.

Cortez was an active servicemon.

And in spite of everything that Zach had worked for, Cortez would remain an active servicemon until the day he died.

-And there was nothing I could do about it. ACE's chain extended from me to the hound that followed me as well.

"Kyle… Cortez belongs to Zane now…" Laura pulled every fiber of her resolve together to stay strong in front of her son, but that poor woman was grieving for Cortez's fate as surely as I was.

"NO HE DOESN'T!" Kyle screamed at his mother, and angry tears began to fall from the betrayed child's eyes. Grabbing Cortez's mane in a firm hold, Kyle pulled that wounded dog tightly against himself as he began to weep.

Hope.

I had delivered hope to this child when I brought Cortez home…

...And now…

...It fell to me to take that hope away from his home.

And that scarred hope…

...My brave friend...

...Was dying before my very eyes.

"Cortez…" I looked into my dog's watering eyes when I softly spoke his name. That poor beast was shaking like a leaf. I wanted to say I was sorry. I wanted to shoulder all of the blame…

...But my torn friend…

..My loyal, indestructible soldier…

...Wasn't going to abandon his CO to his own self-loathing.

There was no hesitation. There was no mercy in Cortez's display. That innocent little dog played the part of a Devil, to spare those he loved of their conflict.

Cortez pulled himself out of Kyle's embrace, and marched over to me, before sitting beside his CO…

...And then my Cortez laid those calm eyes of his on the family that he was doomed to leave.

Laura moved to collect her crying son, and tugged Kyle into a motherly embrace. Her watering eyes met Cortez's unmoved own, as the widow's mouth pursed.

"Don't cry, Kyle… There's no need to cry…" Laura murmured to her child in a broken voice. And now…

...Now it was my turn to man up. Now it was my turn to make an oath that I didn't know if I could fulfill…

...But even if I couldn't keep every promise…

...I was gonna do my damndest to honor everyone of them.

"Kyle." I stood up when I spoke his name in a calm and authoritative voice. Both the mother and son looked over at me as I approached the pair, and lowered myself to a knee.

Meeting that child's reddened eyes filled me with my own sentiments of despair, but I had a duty to perform for my squadmate.

...I had an obligation to uphold for my friend.

"Cortez and I are going to be on the road for awhile." I announced in my official tone. Kyle just glared hatred at me, but I pressed on despite the deteriorating situation.

"Now, I know it's been a long time since you last saw your daddy's dog, and I know that he means the world to you. And it's obvious that you mean the world to Cortez. So here's what we're gonna do." My husky voice grew stronger as I continued. Kyle's accusing eyes softened ever so slightly, and Laura's warding arms loosened around her son.

"Cortez and I have a service to perform. It might take a few months, bordering on a year, but we're gonna get it done. Now, it's gonna be a rough ride for Cortez. I won't lie to you. But at the end of that rough road…" I paused, as the weight of my as of yet unspoken oath fell upon me with all the pressure of my former failures.

"...When everything's said and done, I want to bring my Cortez back home. My soldier is gonna need no end of R&R after this campaign. So do you think that you could look after Cortez for me, when we finish this fight?" My Commander's voice shifted onto a gentle track when I made that request. Kyle's panting wore down into sniffles, as the child looked up at me with renewed hope.

"...Do you promise to bring Cortez home?" Kyle asked in a quaking voice.

"Yeah. I promise." I rumbled, looking over to the hound at my shoulder.

Cortez was still his adamant self. His mask was firmly set over his emotions. But I could see the gratitude in those eyes. I could see the loving dog behind the stalwart soldier.

I knew my Cortez, just as well as he knew me.

"Keep your eyes on the League, Kyle. You'll see Cortez on the television. No matter how far we are from Vermilion, Cortez won't be any further from you than your living room. And besides..." I felt that cocky smile climb its way up the curves of my cheeks.

"...Before too long, the whole world is gonna see who Cortez is. And someone other than me is gonna have to tell'em, Kyle…" Cortez left his spot at my shadow to stand once more at my shoulder.

"...Someone is gonna have to tell the world Cortez's story. I only know a chapter of it. But you, Kyle?" My cocky smirk melted down into a warm smile, as I tossed an arm around Cortez, and proceeded to humiliate him with a vigorous belly rub.

"...You know the rest of Cortez's story. And I want you to tell the world who this dog really is." I rumbled, finally releasing my disgruntled Number Two from his unwanted petrissage.

"Can you promise me that, Kyle? Can you promise me that you'll tell Cortez's story to the world?" I extended my right hand to Kyle in a gesture that even a child could recognize.

Kyle hesitated to take my hand. For a moment, the silent child could only stare at this stranger's offered limb.

But then…

Kyle's stubby soft fingers brushed my calloused grip, and after a series of firm shakes, the two us completed mankind's oldest signature of honorary agreements.

"I promise." Said the now beaming boy, as he deftly shook my hand.

…

I woke up to the ear-splitting shriek of a familiar voice. Lil' Mac was having another one of his nightmares, and my fat Munchlax was gonna wake the whole waterfront district with his incessant bellyaching.

I tossed off my sheets with a groan, and marched over to my panicking Munchlax.

"Mac." I grunted his name as my hands intercepted his braying maw. Mac began to calm when those firm hands gently straightened his neck.

"Take it easy, fatso. It was just a dream." I grumbled, as I sat down next to my infant Munchlax.

"Oh no, not this shit again…" I swore as Mac curled up around me like a fatty wall, and laid his increasingly heavy head against my lap. Mac always pulled this stunt whenever I tried to console him.

"...Enjoy it while it lasts, fatty. Before long, you're gonna be too big for safe cuddling." I grumbled with a shudder. My imagination decided to regale me with the image of Mac in Snorlax form, before my deranged mind's eye proceeded to show me what it would look like to be crushed to death by a Snorlax-Mac's needy snuggle.

"Gawd, I can't believe that a little crybaby like you is gonna grow up to be a nasty fucking Snorlax soon… shit..." I looked down at my relaxing Munchlax with horror written all over my face.

"...Mac? Could you do me a favor, and not grow up?" I pleaded my blob of fat for mercy, and all that dreamy little fucker could give me in response was a warm burp and a happy coo.

"...Yeah, fuck you too." I grunted, as I began to rub the soft spot at the roots of Mac's ears.

I heard an amused sneeze from the vicinity of my now unoccupied bed. Cortez was waltzing his way over to me with a black-lipped smirk firmly plastered on his messed up face.

"What are you smiling about, pooch?" I growled at my Number Two. Cortez just sat on his haunches, and fluttered his half-lidded eyes at me with that canine smile alive and well on his destroyed visage.

"...I ain't warming up to him, Cortez." I hissed, glaring at my gloating dog.

"This is just the only way that I'm ever gonna get a wink of sleep." I spat, slamming myself bodily into Mac's bulk with an angry sigh.

Cortez sneezed at me with amusement, clearly calling bullshit on my claims.

Whatever.

"Get me my fucking coat, Benedict Arnold. I gotta do some homework for the fat fuck. Might as well do it while he's sleeping." I growled to Cortez. That dog was smirking like a motherfucker when he dragged my coat over into my awaiting arms.

"...Right. So how many people did Mac eat while you were babysitting him last night?" I grumbled to Cortez, as I fished out Alexandria and booted up Chimera's Atlas Project logs.

"...Holy shit. Take a gander at some of these other entries. Looks like the Military got the shitty Munchlaxes…" I whistled when I started reading the entries left by the other Atlas Beta Testers.

"Captain Hassen Wade: Notes excessive violence in Atlas-Eleven during nursing sessions. Severe injuries were accrued when Captain Wade attempted to remove the nursing unit from Atlas-Eleven… Severe injuries?! He lost a goddamn thumb!" My jaw dropped when I saw the postoperative medical photos.

"Major Bernie Nelson: Atlas-Eighteen. Suspicion of severe cognitive retardation. Lack of responsiveness and an inability to comprehend the most basic of verbiage. Atlas-Eighteen also displays symptoms of dysphagia, as Atlas-Eighteen frequently chokes on his formula during nursing sessions… Jesus Christ…"

All eleven reports listed no shortage of cognitive, physiological, or emotional instabilities within the Atlas Munchlaxes. Some of the issues were minor, and some of them seemed pretty severe, but all of them were far worse than what I was stuck with.

"Let's see here… Second-Lieutenant Zane Bastard: Mac. Or Atlas-Six. Subject displays an aggravatingly timid disposition. Though difficult to feed on account of his greed, Atlas-Six obeys basic directives to the letter. Extended activity quickly fatigues Atlas-Six, though Lieutenant Bastard notes that Atlas-Six displays a strong aversion to solitude. When faced with the threat of abandonment, Atlas-Six struggles against his own exhaustion to keep pace with Lieutenant Bastard. Yet the most predominant and frustrating behavior relates to Atlas-Six's sleep patterns. Due to a seemingly untreatable case of night terrors, Atlas-Six requires specialized supervision during periods of dormancy. See photo for details." I held the Tact. Pad's camera at arm's length away from my person, and angled the lens for a lofty portrait of a scowling Ranger surrounded by fat rolls, with a sleeping Munchlax's jaw in his lap.

"Perfect." I smiled when I reviewed the selfie, and then I uploaded it and the attached entry into the Atlas Beta-tester's log.

If this was the worst that Mac could manage, then maybe I had gotten lucky in the Atlas Munchlax distribution.

"Those sorry motherfuckers in the Military are gonna be hating my guts real soon." I grinned, sliding the Tac. Pad pack into my coat pocket. My hand paused inside that coat pocket when my fingers brushed up against a familiar piece of fabric. My smiled died pretty quickly when I recalled what that fabric was.

Involuntarily, I found myself drawing my old Beret up for review, when that hand came back out of my coat pocket.

I just stared at that red fabric. My old, shapeless, and bloodstained cap. The decorums of my former rank had been removed, but the crossed knives and shield of the Ranger Corps insignia still stood proudly in gold thread against the black diamond patch beneath it.

And below that golden shield, on an unfurling banner entwined with a bloodied olive branch, was the Ranger's motto, embroidered in silver thread.

" _ **In Pace, Ut Sapiens, Aptarit Idonea Bello"**_

"...In peace, like a wise man, he appropriately prepares for war..." I whispered the translation out loud in hollow revenance.

War.

I had never liked the idea of war. I had never approved of man killing man. But I was trained for war. I was trained to end life, to risk life, to govern life.

I was trained to kill. And though my victims were not human, some wretched part of me lingered on the possibility of them becoming human.

I looked over at Mac. This giant and horrible monster, the fiend that I associated with my most terrible of losses…

...Was just a baby. A frightened child, who in desperation and confusion, had identified a killer of monsters as his mother. A child that I was to raise. A child that I was to train in the ways of war. A monster that I would condition to kill other monsters.

Yet to Mac, I was his home. I was the one who provided him with food. I was the one who sheltered and protected Mac from the monsters who would kill him.

I was the pillow that Mac sought comfort from, when his nightly terrors woke him with their dreadful portents.

If a Munchlax could overcome its nature, and align itself to humanity…

...Couldn't every monster become human too-?

I snorted so Goddamn hard at the passing thought, that I thought my tonsils had been relocated to my sinuses.

"Fuck me… I'm getting as bad as the mon-humpers." I chuckled to myself.

But as my eyes fell down upon my old beret, the cold weight in my chest crushed every ounce of ridicule left in me.

"...Cortez, report." My dry voice called out to my Number Two, and a worried hound came before the Munchlax head drowsing in my lap.

My hands opened my old beret, parting its black brim, before I ceremoniously lowered that red cap upon the scarred half of Cortez's crown.

It didn't fit him at all, but I knew that a safety pin or two would amend the lopsided fit.

"Congratulations, Cortez." My voice was free of ridicule, no joke implied by my eyes. Cortez just stared at me in stoic countenance, accepting the decorum that I had imparted him with.

"My Number Two doesn't just represent the Corps, Cortez. My Number Two represents me. And I in turn, represent him." I raised a salute to my own dog, and after a gravitas moment had passed, Cortez sat upon his haunches, signifying my salute's return.

Looking back on it now, I don't really think that either one of us understood the depth of my gesture. I don't really think that either one of us understood the significance of Cortez's acceptance.

But these two soldiers…

...These two dogs of war…

...Had made it known to each other, and all who saw us side by side, that we were more than just a serviceman and his servicemon.

Cortez and I had finally acknowledged the call that drew us so closely together, without succumbing to our reservations, our fears, or our shame.

We both answered wholeheartedly to that call.

The call of duty. The call of arms. The call of blood.

 _-The call of brotherhood._

 **…**

 **.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.**

 **...**

 _ **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**_ _Well… I lied. The Vermilion Gym is still a long way off. There is no way in hell that I can cram all of Vermilion's content into a single chapter. I didn't expect for so much of the intended content to take up so many words. But hey, that's just Vermilion City for you. This place is just the perfect setting for advancing (by which I mean: obfuscating) plots. Just ask L. lamora._

 _Hopefully, part III of Chapter 8 ( ***snort*** ) won't take 40,000 words to finish. I want to start expanding the relationship between Zane and Theron ASAP. The itch is so fierce that I'm almost tempted to post Book II's prologue before I even start working on Book I's Chapter 10._

 _...But both you guys and I are just gonna have to wait. Theron's story will be released in due time. All in due time._

 _By the by, happy birthday, TSoK. It has been one year to the date since I wrote and posted your first chapter. Here's to your completion before your second birthday, my most favored of FF creations._

 _So now I have to ask the audience to join me in celebration… By having you guys answer TSoK's birthday question:_

 _ **-Which character thus far released, be they human or pokemon, is your favorite?**_

 _If you're struggling to name just one, then list off your top three. And fear not, I'm not going to use the results to determine which member of the cast kicks the bucket next. Everyone's fate has already been decided. You can all rest easy for now…_

 _...Or maybe you shouldn't…_


	11. Chapter X, part 1: Reconciliation

_._

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 **The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero**

 _Written by,_

 **Vile M.F. Slanders**

 **.\\./.\\./.\\./.\\./.\\./.**

 ***T...T...T...T***

 **I-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-I**

 **\\_v_v_v_/**

 **\\-.-.**.-.-/**

 **V-._.-V**

 **\\.^./**

 **V**

 **.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.**

" _ **Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,**_

 _ **Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,**_

 _ **qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,**_

 _ **quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.**_

 _ **nam castum esse decet pium poetam**_

 _ **ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est;**_

 _ **qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,**_

 _ **si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici,**_

 _ **et quod pruriat incitare possunt,**_

 _ **non dico pueris, sed his pilosis**_

 _ **qui duros nequeunt movere lumbos.**_

 _ **vos, quod milia multa basiorum**_

 _ **legistis, male me marem putatis?**_

 _ **pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo."**_

 _ **.**_

" _ **I will sodomize and face-fuck you,**_

 _ **Aurelius, you cocksucker; Furius, you little bitch,**_

 _ **since you think that my little poems**_

 _ **have gone soft and I must not be too upright.**_

 _ **It's true; the devoted poet should stand erect**_

 _ **in his values, but not necessarily in his little**_

 _ **poems, which are truly witty and charming**_

 _ **when they're a little soft, and not too stiff,**_

 _ **but can still cause a little tingling-**_

 _ **I don't just mean for youth, but for hairy men**_

 _ **who can't make their own loins stand upright!**_

 _ **You! You read about my "many kisses"**_

 _ **and doubt I'm fully a man?**_

 _ **I will sodomize and face-fuck you.**_

 _-Gaius Valerius Catullus, one of the Neoteric Poets, in "Carmen XVI," his response to Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus and Marcus Furius Bibaculus's criticism of "Carmen V." Born 84 BC in the province of Gallia Citerior. Died 54 BC, location unknown. Exalted hero to all poets._

 **-v-**

 **Chapter X: Reconciliation (Part 1 of 3)**

"Excuse me! Excuse me!"

"...Can I help you, miss?"

"I'm terribly sorry! I'm... umm… I'm looking for someone."

"Well, I dunno if I can help you-"

"Just a moment of your time! That's all I ask for!"

"Well…"

"Please, it's very important-"

"-You're not from Celedon, are you girl?"

"No, I hail from Kalos-"

"That explains the colorful getup. Those are some pretty elaborate contact lens that you've got there."

"...Thank you for your kind words-"

"-Those words aren't meant to be kind, sister. You look like the orphaned love-child of a Froslass and a rainbow."

" _Thank you._ Your wardrobe appraisal is _most_ appreciated. I will take my leave-"

"Who are you looking for, fruitloop?"

"...My name is Valerie Le-Faye, _sir._ And I would be most grateful should you endeavor to practice a modicum of decency."

"...Sorry. I'm not used to meeting a Fairy Trainer who isn't gushing insanity."

"It's quite understandable, though even under such circumstances, I'm frankly appalled at _your_ crass conduct."

"I said I'm sorry. Jesus, there's no need to get all huffy. Now who are you looking for?"

"I'm looking for a young man. He commonly wears black attire. Sunglasses that completely obscure his eyes. Dark, short hair. Fair complexion. Fine posture. He rarely speaks to strangers."

"Wow. You do realize that you just described every member of every punk boy band from here to Unova, right?"

"You'd know him if you saw him. He's a Channeler-"

"Yeah, I typically try to avoid freaks like that."

"-He's from Kalos, same as me-"

"Nope."

"You can feel his Distortion seep from very far away-!"

"Thanks for the tip off. If I see any queer dudes sporting black threads who can incite goosebumps from a city block away, then I'm running as fast as I can in the opposite direction-"

"-Please! I've been looking for him for over a month now! Somebody must have seen him!"

"Why the hell are you looking for this creep?! That doesn't sound like the kinda guy you'd want to find!"

"...He's my fiancé."

"... _Oh."_

"..."

"I'm sorry, miss Le-Faye. I would never have guessed. You have my most sincere of condolences."

"...Good day to you."

"Yeah, goodbye or whatever to you too."

"..."

"..."

" _..._ Oh, _Empousa…"_

"..."

"...Where could Theron possibly be?"

…

"Well, well, well… Don't you just look like absolute shit, girl." I was smiling so damn hard when I said those words, I thought my face would split at the cheeks.

Vauban fell in at my side, the tip of her budding bulb was now level with my shoulder.

My little girl was doing everything she could to contain her emotions. I could see her leaves quivering from the joy of our reunion. But this wasn't the place for affectionate displays.

So Vauban eagerly waited for me to finish signing the transfer authorization, before I accepted a pair of pokeballs from the Quartermaster's foam case.

"Those are some pretty intricate scars on your Ivysaur. What happened to her back?" The Quartermaster asked, when I finished signing both Vauban and Darwin's requisition documents.

I looked over at my much bigger little girl, and took note of the spiraling white scar tissue that had altered Vauban's dorsal hide. The marks bore a stark resemblance to primitive man's petroglyphs, detailing pale snakes, whitewashed rivers, and hoary wisps of wind. I found myself swallowing hard when I recalled the surgery that had cut and stripped the dermal roots free from Vauban's hide. My little girl hadn't escaped her trial unblemished, but she had come out of it with her life.

"Just some memorabilia from a medical operation. Vauban's bulb went section-eight." I replied as I returned the inked and dated forms to the Quartermaster, who whistled in awe.

"Nothing so bad that they had to torch her?" The Quartermaster asked in complete nonchalant, but his casual question still brought a twitch to my hand and a stiffening of my jaw.

"...No. It'd never be that bad." I looked over at my brickhouse of a little girl, whose gooey eyes were beginning to water for joy.

"Come on, Vauban. Let's go relieve Cortez of babysitting detail. I want everyone present for Darwin's release." I started off slowly, making damn sure that my plodding Ivysaur was no more than a fourth pace behind me. Vauban wasn't having any difficulty walking from what I could see, though her evolution had altered the length of her limbs rather drastically.

Before her evolution, my little girl possessed a physique reminiscent of a toad. Which is to say that the old Vauban was drag-ass pudgy and stubby limbed.

Now though…

...My little girl looked as fit as a Phrynosoma. Vauban still had a rounded body and a blunt snout, but she was noticeably flatter along her anteroposterior axis, as well as perceivably longer of limb.

...And did I mention that my Vauban was bigger?

The Bulbasaur Vauban had weighed in at a dapper forty-two pounds and fourteen ounces. The Ivysaur Vauban tipped the scales at two-hundred-sixty-seven pounds and nine ounces. A budding Ivysaur should have weighed even more than that, but Vauban's pre-evolution surgery had taken a lot out of her. Even so, Vauban was still one healthy looking Ivysaur.

"Melissa knows her shit cold. You look fucking amazing, girl." I smiled at my Vauban, and that goofy dinosaur released a quirky little rasp, right before she headbutted my thigh.

"Easy, Vauban! Damnit!" I damn near hit the sidewalk after receiving Vauban's affectionate nuzzle. She was a helluva lot stronger now too.

Vauban fell back with a sheepish look, but I wasn't letting her get away with the rough love.

"Get over here, you!" I wrapped an arm around Vauban's neck, before I proceeded to administer a head nuggie to my doting little girl. After her scales had chaffed my knuckles red, I turned my Ivysaur loose and swatted her on the rump. Vauban just about bowled me over again with another affectionate headbutt, accompanied by a warbling hiss.

I was laughing my ass off as the two of us fell back into step. One grinning serviceman, and his darling servicemon. The pair of us were anything but picturesque, but hell if I cared about martial etiquette right now.

Zane had his little girl back, and Vauban finally had her Zane back.

And nothing could possibly fuck our moment up.

"I missed you girl…" I removed my lingering hand from its position below Vauban's chin. Those watering eyes and that little sniffle of hers kindled the fading glee in me for a moment longer.

"...I wish I had good news to greet you with, but things are more or less the same they've always been. We've been mandated into an unpleasant assignment, and there are more variables in our duty now then there has ever been before. But come on, Vauban…" My smiled began to wane as I provided Vauban with the sit-rep. Nevertheless, I still managed a half hearted smirk for my little girl's morale.

"...It's just another day in the Ranger Corps for the Fucking Bastard and his little girl…" I murmured, as the encroaching despondency slowed my steps and bowed my head.

Vauban was silent for a moment, warily observing my uncharacteristic depression. But then, that sweetheart of an Ivysaur gently nudged my spine, pushing me forward while straightening my posture.

"...Both you and Cortez, huh?" I chuckled, running a hand over the hardened auricles of Vauban's scaly ears. Vauban burrowed her face into my ribs, and wheezed out a little burp.

"It's good to have you at my side again, girl… It's good to have you back." I pulled myself out of the gloom, and set my firm pace marching towards a familiar haunt for this old Ranger.

And my little girl followed closely in his shadow, rekindling the cold embers of my resolve.

…

"Doctor O'Hare." I greeted Waterloo's Atlas developer with a businesslike air. One giant Munchlax knocked his physician to the floor when the eager fat freak pulled himself free of his examination, and scampered over to Momma Zane's tired voice.

"Slow down, chubby. You're gonna get someone hurt." I grunted, intercepting Mac's probing nose with a pair of hands. Vauban had tensed up the instant that Carb Mountain had made his presence known, but now that Mac had calmed himself down with my reacquaintance, my little girl fixed a pair of stunned eyes on me.

"Vauban, this is Mac. Mac, say hello to your big sister Vauban." I sighed, directing Mac's invasive snout down towards the nervous Ivysaur at my side.

"Mac is the newest Bastard in our squad, Vauban. He's an aggravating pain in the ass, but other than that, he's not your average Munchlax." I did my best to deliver the sucker punch softly. Vauban, like Cortez, still remembered our last encounter with this species, and she had suffered Echo's lost almost as profusely as I had.

Vauban has a big heart. She'd need one to justify her relationship to me, but even so, I didn't know if my little girl would receive a Munchlax as readily as Cortez had.

Mac's black nose inspected a new curious scent, as he whiffed about Vauban's neck and bulb. Vauban stiffened up when Mac's snout touched her brow, and that Ivysaur bore her tusks with a warning hiss.

"Mac, start backing up _now._ " My urgent voice ordered when Vauban's bulb quivered in a clear indication of my little girl's verdict.

"...Vauban, just chill." I spoke softly to my agitated Ivysaur, as I forcefully dragged the oblivious Mac away from his likely pollination, and a beret donning Growlithe moved forward to calm a perturbed Vauban.

"Keep it cool, Vauban. We're all friends here." It wasn't the voice of command that made such a request of my little girl. It was the weary voice of Zane Bastard that pleaded with his little girl for peace. Cortez was having a measure of success in his intervention, greeting Vauban with a formal whiffing and a gentle bumping of noses. Vauban's hissing quieted, and my little girl allowed Cortez to continue with his familial ministrations, but those wary eyes of hers were locked on Mac, before they flicked suspiciously to my person.

"...Give him a chance, Vauban. He's not what you think he is. At least not yet…" I muttered, guiding Mac back to Doctor O'Hare.

The Waterloo Developer was gaping at this peculiar exchange. This wasn't the kind of interaction that you'd expect of a serviceman and his servicemon. This display wasn't something that you'd expect of your stereotypical trainer.

This was far more personal than most exchanges between humans and monsters.

"...So what's the status on Mac's development, Doctor?" I breached the awkward silence with a question. Doctor O'Hare managed to close her mouth and swallow, before she answered my exhausted query.

"Well, his growth rate is well within our expected parameters. Though I'm a little concerned about his metabolism. Normally after satisfying their appetite, Munchlaxes enter a prolonged state of dormancy. But during our feeding session, Mac refused to return the teat, even when the lines had run dry. This compulsive behavior suggests-" Doctor O'Hare began, but I cut her off with a laugh.

"Did you punch him in the face when he got angsty, or did you just simper and beg for the teat?" I mocked. Doctor O'Hare stiffened up.

"Perhaps I don't want to emulate your nurturing practices, Lieutenant." Doctor O'Hare retorted. I just chuckled at that, and punched Mac firmly in the shoulder.

"You're not doing a servicemon any favors by coddling him, Doctor. My fists have absolutely nothing on a Rhyperior's horn." I snorted.

"A Rhyperior is an adversary. A commanding officer is an ally. So how is a cerebrally modified Munchlax going to identify the difference between an adversary and an ally if both greet him with violence?" Doctor O'Hare growled at me.

"Easily. The commanding officer identifies the Munchlax's adversaries. And the Munchlax obeys its CO's command… Or the Munchlax dies." An edge of impatience crept into my voice, and a severe eyed Doctor was glaring her disapproval at the sole Ranger in the Pokemart.

"...You have your methods, Doctor O'Hare, and I have mine. We both operate in different fields, and we both have dissimilar concerns to address. You produce your warmon, and trust me to turn them into servicemon." I let the rising anger fade, and the accusing eyes of Doctor O'Hare flitted over to the Munchlax at my side.

Mac was sitting on his haunches, both silent and still, his blind eyes level with my own. The spitting image of servicemon obedience.

Doctor O'Hare tossed her hands into the air with an aggravated shrug, both eyebrows raised and an exasperated look on her pimpled face. But she wasn't going to argue any further with me.

The example at my right hadn't exactly provided the Waterloo Developer with any further grounds for propagating her ethical platform.

"I've adjusted Mac's daily formula dosage to test my suspicions. I'm going to need you to keep an accurate record of his post-feeding behaviors. We'll run the trial for a week, forbearing any early signs that indicate some other cause for Mac's post-feeding aggression." Doctor O'Hare began to pack her examination bag away.

"Hopefully my suspicions are correct, and Mac's CO won't have to make a habit out of punching his hungry Munchlax whenever he begs for food." Doctor O'Hare spat as she shouldered her kit, and moved towards the exit without even looking at me.

But I wasn't letting her walk away that easily.

I intercepted Doctor O'Hare's retreat with a cordially extended arm.

"I hope that your assessment is correct, Doctor O'Hare. Pleasure doing business with you." Doctor O'Hare met my calm eyes, her expression both alarmed and suspicious. But there was no joke betrayed by my demeanor. No mocking insinuation to question the value of her ethics.

I had conceded to Doctor O'Hare's argument, and I made that known with a humble gesture.

It took a moment for Doctor O'Hare to overcome her shock, but when she did…

The Waterloo Developer's hand had taken mine in a stiff grip, before Doctor O'Hare released me from our hasty exchange, and departed from the aromatherapy ward without another word.

"...Like I said, Vauban…" I sighed, looking over to my two awaiting veteran servicemon.

"...Same old world, new pile of shit." I groaned. Cortez rolled his head with a snort, before leaving the stunned Vauban at the aromatherapy ward's entrance, and taking his place by my knees.

"Now come on, girl. I have a fat fucking fish to kiss for his performance in a Cerulean Gym. Loosen the lead, team! The Bastards are moving out!" I grinned at my little girl, as my fingertips caressed the only occupied pokeball on my belt.

…

"Well, well, well…" I was grinning like a smug sonovabitch when a familiar guileless red face breached the still wharfside waters.

"...Well don't you just look like the best seven-thousand-and-eight-hundred-Sandz that I will ever spend in my life."

The water around Darwin begin to dance in a series of oscillating wakes, as my fat fucking miracle fluttered his feathery fins just below the surface.

"It's good to have you back, Darwin. How's the bullet wound?" I was trying not to laugh at my fish's euphoric display, but I couldn't hold back every giggle.

Darwin had always infected me with a peculiar humor. It probably had something to do with that goofy looking face of his.

Darwin swam around in a quick little pirouetted with a pair of tail flicks, revealing the severity of a Blastoise's hydro ballistic damage.

My breath came in sharp and harsh between my clenched teeth when I saw the wound that Shellshock had inflicted on my fish.

"...Goddamn you, Mermaid…" I hissed.

Darwin wasn't just missing scales on his portside.

Shellshock had damn near cored my Darwin with his last bullet.

There was no other way to explain it: there was a fucking _hole_ the size of my head in Darwin's flank.

"Get your ass over here." I spat at Darwin with a worried tone, jumping off the pier and into the freezing ocean.

Darwin came up beside me slowly, almost warily, as I treaded into deeper water.

Taking Darwin's left side in both arms, I rolled my compliant fish over for a closer look at his injury.

And my lone eye was greeted by Darwin's exposed ribs poking through the scabbing tissues of his flank.

Every prior shame that I had shouldered for my performance in the Cerulean City Gym match now vacated my conscience with a vocalized string of curses.

"FUCK YOU, MISTY!" I roared it at the top of my lungs.

 _-What the fuck did you do to my goddamn Magikarp?!_

It took me a moment of chattering teeth and rabid panting to get it all under control again, but even then, I was still scalding furious.

"You heartless bitch… Oh, I fucking swear… you're never gonna get above that mono-flame ranking. You're never gonna be anything more than a fallen dream. I can't wait for the seasonal finals now… I can't wait to shoot you down in the first-quota stage!" I was swearing vengeance against Misty after I'd already sunk her gym.

There was no way in hell that I was letting the Tomboy Mermaid get away with this.

I pulled my hypothermic ass out of the frigid water and back onto the pier, before stripping off my drenched coat and tossing it against the pier with an attitude ripe enough to curdle fresh milk.

I sat there on the cold cement, with my legs dangling over the pier, one hand covering my furious mouth. Horrified eyes staring at my wary Darwin.

That kind of injury could cripple my fish for life.

After I'd taken a moment to simmer and stew, I dragged my Tact. pad free from the the clinging confines of my soused coat, and brought up Darwin's latest evaluation records on the Ranger Corps's medical database.

What the Ranger surgeons had archived was anything but comforting.

That wound would never fully heal, so long as Darwin remained a Magikarp.

...But should he actually evolve into a Gyarados, then I had a half dozen professional guarantees that every trace of Darwin's injury would disappear after his second molt.

"...Guess it's gonna be awhile before you see the battlefield again, Darwin." I muttered down to my fish.

Darwin's idle motions went dead still.

That poor fish was looking up at me from the confines of the sea, and even though his gaping expression was incapable of shifting from its static norm…

...I knew that grounding Darwin from future competition was a blow to my fish's budding ego.

Darwin had done his damndest in the only battle I'd ever let him fight. He'd overcome impossible odds and delivered me nothing less than a miracle in his one chance to shine. He'd taken a mortal blow just to win me a badge, and he never thought less of our cause for it.

...And now, I had just kicked my poor miracle right in the balls, when I informed him that Cerulean was going to be his last performance.

"...Don't look at me like that, Darwin. You did your part. You did more than your part. You were- _are_ fucking magnificent, and I'm never going to forget it." I fixed my eye on that hurt fish, and breathed my softest of condolences to the single most unexpected miracle in my life.

"You're more to me than a bullet sponge, you fucking fat ass. This has nothing to do with your one-of-a-kind capabilities. This has everything to do with your health. I'm not risking your life by putting you in the line of fire until that wound heals. You earned your R&R, Ranger. Just like you always have."

I was not following in Misty's ambitious footsteps. I was not gonna run the risk of turning my Darwin into the next Shellshock.

"Quit your moping this instant. You will fight again, Darwin. Your R&R has an expiration date, so don't you dare get soft and lazy on me." I growled, and a sudden resurgence of aquatic activity in the water around Darwin signified my fish's revitalized spirit.

Never stop trying, Darwin.

I know that you're gonna be the fat fucking Magikarp _that could_.

"Get your chunky ass over here. I'm not coddling you back into your pokeball, Skitty-bait. You're still gonna put forth a fucking effort." I bullied my fish back into his signature portrayal of laid back euphoria, but I knew that Darwin was still hurting inside.

I remember how I felt, back when Colonel Howes had recommended my medical discharge following the Snorlax incident.

I knew what it was like, dealing with a disability.

I knew how denial felt like the only hope for those of us who had been recently crippled.

For all of the hale and hearty appearances that had followed his release, Darwin couldn't hide his pain from me.

I had tried the exact same stunt that Darwin was currently pulling, fervently praying that it would keep a beret on my head.

 _-Put me back in the game, coach. I can still play._

"Darwin, you are dismissed." I recalled my fat miracle into his pokeball, and reverently returned Darwin to my belt.

"...You'll get your chance, Darwin. I'm never going to give up on one of my soldiers." I murmured to his pokeball, before I turned around to address my waiting trio of servicemon.

Mac had passed out as soon as we'd come to a standstill in the wharf, Vauban was keeping her distance from the new face in our squad, and Cortez was sitting his resolute self between the two of them, his calm eyes weighing heavily on me.

"Stand to, Bastards!" I shouted, and Mac shot straight up, suddenly wide awake.

"Vauban! Get your ass into formation with Cortez and Mac this instant!" I roared, and my little girl hustled to fulfill my directive. I took my steps pacing towards her location with a dire look in my sole eye.

"Listen here, Vauban. You have ten seconds to put your past behind you. I am not letting my unit fall apart because you can't get over the accident that claimed our Echo. Straighten your ass out this instant, or I will straighten it out for you." I let that hypocrisy leave my lips with an angry growl. Vauban began to wither beneath my livid glare, but then she remembered who I was.

"Thatta girl." I rumbled my approval when Vauban hardened her expression and straighten out her posture.

"Now that we're all situated, I need to explain a few things to my vets." I glared at Vauban and Cortez, after I took my position at the head of their formation.

"...The Bastards are in a very peculiar situation. Cortez has already sampled a taste of our peculiar situation, but I'm gonna clarify it for you both right now." I fell into the at ease, and surveyed my stoic unit with a severe eye.

"We have been indoctrinated into a highly unorthodox mission. A mission that our prior training has not prepared us for. Now, I can say with confidence-"

-Que an ice cold sensation and a sudden depression seizing me from the blue.

Everybody in my unit felt it.

...And Cortez was the only one who didn't lose his head.

Mac fell over his own feet when he tried to flee in terror, and Vauban immediately went on the offensive.

My little girl knew exactly what that sensation signified, and she had been trained to respond to it with the appropriate hostility. Even if there was nothing she could do to stop it.

-Theron had the worst goddamn timing.

"Vauban! Stand down this instant! MAC! GET YOUR FAT ASS BACK INTO FORMATION!" I roared my head off at my two compromised mon, and fought to maintain control of my unit.

Vauban may have been in a bad way, but Mac had just given up. That quivering ball of lard had buried his head into his fat rolls, and was whimpering his sweet life away with a futile appeal of submission.

Mac wasn't going anywhere, and there was no way in hell that I was going to reclaim, or require, his obedience and discipline for dealing with this. But Vauban was still prepping her vines for a critical battle with the Ghost that had just risen out of the Ranger's shadow cast behind me.

"...Care to tell me what TH sent you for, Exodus?" I hissed, turning around to face the bleeding grin that had split open my now three-dimensional silhouette like a suppurating cyst.

There are few appearances more unnerving than that of a disembodied mouth and eyes pulsating in a shapeless black cloud of whirling smoke. But the shriveled gums, chipped teeth, mutilated lips, and peeled back eyelids of a Gengar only serve to make the spectacle all the more disturbing.

"...You're wasting my air, freak." I hissed. Exodus's festering maw split even further apart with an asphyxiated chuckle, as the Ghost's bruised and swollen tongue thrashed its way past the confines of Exodus's awful mouth, dragging the abscessed tissues of his palate out in a conical extension behind his tache noire'd appendage.

"...If you so much as touch me with that fucking tongue, Exodus… Then you can go tell TH to take his cute little offer and shove it straight up his-" I began, but Exodus's throbbing black hole of a throat started to spasm, and that freaky fucking Ghost began to speak with TH's voice.

"Apologies for the alarming herald, Ranger, but if I may request your immediate presence at my suite in the Portis de Paris?" TH's voice simpered from Exodus's quivering pharynx.

"...You've gotta be kidding me." I stared into Exodus's rotting maw with the sheerest expression of disbelief.

-This had to be the single stupidest and creepiest fucking thing that I had ever seen.

"...Should I interpret that as your consent to a rendezvous, Ranger?" TH asked in an amused tone.

"Didn't I give you my phone number, you creepy fucker?" I asked, taking a step back from Exodus's seizuring throat.

-If I didn't know any better, I'd say that Exodus was trying to vomit on me. And I didn't want to find out what Gengar emesis did to human flesh.

"Again, I apologize for the improvisation, but I'm a little… too preoccupied to properly manage a pager right now." TH stated in a strained voice.

-That didn't sound good.

"Alright, I'm on my way. Now get your gassy Gengar out my fucking face." I growled down Exodus's throat.

Both TH and Exodus started chuckling in perfect unison, which made for yet another one of the eeriest cacophonies that I had yet to hear.

-There is nothing quite like listening to the sound of a pleasant human laugh in the midst of all that anguished screaming and fervent chanting.

"Get out of here, you freak." I hissed past my jangled nerves, and banished Exodus with but a handful of words.

Exodus began to swallow his own smoke, before he shrank down into a bleeding and toothy hole in the ground. Only after the last of that inky smudge had dribbled through the concrete and sizzled away into a greasy stain, could I experience the sweet earth free from a Gengar's ice cold Distortion seep again.

I sighed, and turned back to my frazzled unit with a shaking head.

"Well if that wasn't one of the most fucked up things he's pulled yet…" I grumbled, rubbing my eyes. I took a moment to collect myself and to allow my unit to acclimate to the swift shift in ambience.

"As I said before, Vauban..." I looked over to my stunned little girl with a weary look on my face.

Vauban's wide eyes were locked on me with the telltale expression of shellshock.

"...Welcome back to the frontlines, girl." I grumbled, lifting three soon-to-be occupied GI pokeballs from my belt.

…

The pompous motherfucker had his own personal wait staff.

Stereotypical Kalosian richboy.

Now, I may have come from a pampered upbringing, but my family had always managed to do without privatized butlers, chefs, or housekeepers. If anyone in my old crib wanted something to drink, then they could pour their beverage of choice for themselves. My old man had always enforced a fierce sense of independence in the homestead. If you couldn't take care of yourself, then you shouldn't expect someone else to do the job for you.

New wealth is always proud of its self-earned history. And my old man made damn sure that his son wasn't going to grow up taking daddy's money for granted. My old man made damn sure that I knew what independence and pride was, much to his regret.

But old wealth? And we're talking nigh on two millenniums worth of excessive hereditary indulgences here…

In other words, _Kalosian wealth…_

...Tying shoes is for peons. Even if those shoes happen to be on your own two feet.

TH could probably speak eight different languages fluently; list off every major event in world history like it was common knowledge; appraise art and cuisine with professional-grade critique; maybe he could even pull a hair-brained Newtonian physics-defying math equation out of his ass, but I'll be damned if that Kalosian snob actually knew how to tie his own shoes.

But that's just the nobility for you.

They study subjects belonging to a far more imperative curriculum, which amends the societal vacuum generated by their blue-blooded anti-conventionalism.

-Imperative subjects such as _polo_ for example _._

Either way, when a white-gloved and tailcoat clad baby-faced motherfucker approached me upon my entrance to the Portis de Paris's lobby, I was overcome with a little twinge of disgust for the servile weasel.

"Monsieur Bâtard?" The butler asked me in a hesitant manner.

"Lieutenant Bastard." I corrected, jabbing a finger up to the insignia on my balmoral.

"Apologies, Lieutenant. Ah'm happee tu'ze that jou could anseur le Duc Halcyon's summons on such short notease." The butler bowed at the waist, and ushered me towards a waiting lift.

-That corny accent was gonna drive me straight up the wall. Thank God the prude knew how to carry out his job. The ride up to TH's suite was silent, as befitting Kalosian etiquette.

Kalosians don't hold conversations in elevators. For some unfathomable reason, they consider it rude.

The hall leading to TH's suite was abuzz with activity. Maids and caretakers were everywhere, alternatively organizing hampers of luggage and packing crates full of luggage. This was something new to me. Every time that I'd seen TH prior, the cocksucker had been all by his lonesome. But I guess that the Lord Halcyon had no desire to be tailed by a fawning cabal on his evening strolls.

"Right thiz vay, plez." My escort guided me through the commotion to the suite entrance, and no sooner than we'd breached the cozy chamber beyond, than it was that my suited accomplice announced my presence with a loud cry.

"Lieutenant Bâtard est arrivé, mon seigneur!"

-At least he pronounced "Lieutenant" correctly.

A drove of attendants separated from the center of the front facility, revealing a scene that left me speechless.

"Zane! So good to see that you could make it!" TH proclaimed, lowering his velvet clad arms from their supportive position.

"...What in God's name are you _wearing?_ " My stunned voice breathed out.

The roomful of pleasant faces fell upon hearing my awestruck outburst. Well, the attendants' faces fell, but his smug majesty's smile never wavered for a second.

"I appreciate your timely arrival, Ranger. Now if we may have a bit of privacy…" TH dismissed his attendants with that subtle hint and a lofty gesture. The entire swarm of suits and aprons withdrew from the room, leaving TH and me alone in his private chambers.

"I realize that my herald may have caused you no undue stress, so I wish to recapitulate my former apologies." TH inlined his spine to my person, but his gesture fell well short of a full bow. Nevertheless, his erroneous attire still flounced about with the simplest of motions.

The pompous turd was decked out in a forgotten era's garb. TH's embroidered coat and its ornate cuffs may have seemed trendy at first glance, but the inclusion of tailcoats and tight white breeches had graced the Eidolon King with a far more comical appearance.

"What the hell is going on?" I asked in a stunned voice. TH's face pinched with an amused chuckle, before the archaic dweeb saw fit to answer me.

"Merely a fitting to ensure that the old coat still sits tight upon the shoulders." TH answered with a pleasant smile, as though it should've been obvious.

"...Although, I must confess, the simple life has deprived me of my former volume. Perhaps I should have attended the hotel's gymnasium, just for old times' sake…" TH chortled, rotating his shoulders with a sigh. A new presence made itself known when the racket in the hallway had faded away, and TH's watchdog of an Aegislash took his shrouded position by the suite's entry door.

"...Is this location secure?" I asked in a guarded voice. TH snorted so hard that I thought he might've choked.

"A hotel? Really, Ranger… You need to operate outside of the Frontier more often." TH chortled, giving me his most cynical version of 'No'.

-So our unofficial business was currently off the itinerary.

"We're gonna need to straighten things out sooner rather than later. A problem came up, and it's got me worried." I grunted. TH sighed, and lightly brushed the pearl buttons of his left cuff.

"I'm afraid that it will have to be later, instead of sooner, Ranger. I leave for the Ellis archipelago within the hour." TH announced, bringing a chill to my spine.

"I thought that you weren't leaving for another five days!" I growled, as a fresh wave of indignity overcame my person.

"That was my original projection, but just as you have inconvenient circumstances to address in your profession, so too must I contend with such in mine." TH removed his trendy shades, and replaced them with a set of circular Victorian rims, replete with tinted lenses. Squinting through the tiny lenses, TH's upper lip curled with annoyance.

"Of all the fandangled improvisations! I should fire that damn bijoutier!" TH snarled as he reached up to strip the antiquated spectacles from his face. But no sooner than his fingers had wrapped around the golden stems, then it was that TH paused and drew a calming breath.

"They'll have to suffice…" TH muttered, removing his hands from his latest of donned anachronisms.

"So ugly fucking shades qualify as an inconvenient circumstance, huh?" I spat from my frustrated corner. TH rubbed his eyelids, and turned to me with a slight smile.

"They're a trifling inconvenience to be sure, but I'm afraid the most egregious of circumstances manifests in the form of an unseemly development. A recent development that has taxed my confidence and patience somewhat severely." TH's tone implied an apology, but I had ears only for an explanation.

"So what came up? I take it this has something to do with the Concordant?" I grunted.

"Unfortunately yes. I don't mean to be rude, Zane, but I must prioritize the fate of three nations over our unofficial agenda." TH resumed his casual air, and lifted a pressed silk sash from a velvet lined case, before draping said sash across his embroidered right shoulder.

"So what happened? Did Fuhrer Adler drop a bomb on Sinnoh last night?" I grumbled, pressing for more details.

"No, no. Nothing quite so drastic as that, but to be perfectly truncated in explaining the difficulties associated with mine current situation: It is rather difficult to host a multinational peace conference when all of the participants have elected to bring their navies to the summit." TH droned pleasantly.

"That sounds like a bullet-riddled solution for establishing peace." I laughed. TH just sighed and shook his head, ever so slightly despondent.

"You are of course, correct in your grave analysis. I have personally guaranteed Fuhrer Adler's protection, I've pledged my every asset to that cause, and yet it seems that the mighty Fuhrer Adler finds his personal entourage of Unovian Destroyer Classes a more befitting form of security." TH groaned, rubbing his eyes.

"Well, you're the backstabbing fomenter who invited a paranoid despot to a controversial meet-and-greet. What did you expect?" I quirked an eyebrow at TH.

"...This is exactly what I expected. What I was _hoping_ for, was trust." TH straightened himself out.

"Like I said: _fomenter_. Hell, if you can't talk the Fuhrer out of bringing his navy to the delegations, then why don't you talk Sinnoh down from bringing their navy, and keep your navy in the Kalosian docks? Be the bigger man. If you can convince the Fuhrer that there's no need to bring armed forces, then I'm sure he'll give you the benefit of the doubt." I sarcastically suggested, as if TH and I weren't already aware that Fuhrer Adler wasn't concerned with who was gonna be the bigger man. Nevertheless, TH still managed to send a pleasant smile my way.

"I have sway in Sinnoh, but nowhere near enough influence to dictate the marshalling of their armed forces. And as for Kalos… Well, I'm not exactly qualified to order for a dissolution of the military's counteraction." TH confessed.

"But I thought that _you_ ruled Kalos! Everything that I've heard about you and the Kalosian Crown makes the current King sound like a puppet of yours! What do you mean, you're not qualified to order a dissolution of arms?!" I cried out. TH started chuckling, before he drew a great and weary breath.

"It is true, I do possess influences befitting a King of Kalos, but not every asset of the Crown answers to my beck and call. You must understand, Zane… My challenge for Kalos's Crown has weakened my great nation. To say that I am just as powerful as King Allan Arturia is not at all inaccurate, but you must realize that my eminence has only been established by dividing the powers of King Allan Arturia. In slightly more curtailed phrasing, I am as mighty as Kalos's King, because I have made Kalos's King _weak_." TH explained.

"...How can your nation even operate with so much political infighting!? You make it sound as if Kalos is a dog caught between the call of two opposing masters!" This was not what I was expecting. TH always radiated an air of control. The Eidolon King ruled any commune that he took part of! ACE feared this single human being as if he were the face of a rival nation! And here, TH was practically submitting to his own helplessness with a tired smile on his face!

"Both King Allan Arturia's and mine own political powers are derived from the Noble Houses that support us. The Noble Houses continue to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Kalosian government, regardless of the social strife generated by House Arturia and House Halcyon's contest for the Crown. The King of Kalos possess no more power than what the nobility allots him, and when the Noble Houses are divided in their choice of a King…" TH trailed off, looking to me for some form of recognition or revelation, but I was still struggling to accept TH's former explanation.

"So why can't you just command the Kalosian military to-" I began again, but TH cut me off with an irritated gesture.

"There are nine Noble Houses and one Royal House that rules over Kalos, Zane. Whereas the Noble Houses of feudal yore swore fealty to a King and governed their own provinces, the modern-day Noble Houses of Kalos are instead assigned differentiating administrative functions. Noble House Wikstrom governs the military affairs of Kalos, and said House Wikstrom has staunchly supported House Arturia's claim to the Crown." TH elaborated, granting me some manner of insight as to the design of the Kalosian monarchy.

"So you don't control the Kalosian military?" I asked. TH shook his head with a light chuckle.

"Not directly, no. House Arturia may have secured the loyalties of House Wikstrom and House Shabboneau, but even with the House of Defense and the House of Magistracy's considerable political powers… I still possess Kalos's Secret Service, its Media, and its Banking Industry. So suffice to say, if House Arturia wishes to mobilize Kalos's _expensive_ military, then they'll first require the support of Kalos's banks." TH smiled pleasantly at the end, and I was only left further confuddled by his admission of impotence.

"...So just refuse to fund the military's mobilization. Look, I don't see what the big deal is-" I began, but TH interrupted me with a swoon of laughter.

"If only it were so simple! But I'm afraid that statecraft is _never_ a simple process. You must remember, Zane: there is a powerful organization actively working against me. Every action that I take is scrutinized for _any_ possible motivation, no matter how unfounded such motivations may seem. If I were to refuse funding for Kalos's military, it wouldn't prove all that difficult for House Arturia to publically paint my noble intentions with glaring shades of fragility. Establishing peace with Unova may be a desired goal of my nation, but foolishly trusting the benevolence of Unova's dictator would be regarded as naive at best. No. If I am to maintain House Halcyon's continued public support, then I must play charades and authorize the funding of Kalos's military. But with that said…" TH grinned to himself, before lifting his concealed eyes to my person.

"...The ideal means of securing your own prerogatives within statecraft comes of negotiating a _compromise._ I will concede victory to House Arturia in this trivial battle… But not without first depriving House Arturia of a valuable asset that they will most assuredly have need of later on in this war…" TH's wicked grin grew even wider, and I found myself fighting off the chills in light of his passionate scheming. TH's evil smile faded, and his business tone resurfaced as he glossed over his new political agenda.

"Regardless of every participating nations' brash appearance, the delegations will proceed in a peaceful manner. Now that I have accepted the futility in contesting what will be, I must quickly adapt my priorities from dissuading the mobilization of the Concordant's navies, to ensuring that such navies' presences does not interfere with the goal of the Concordant's convention." TH adjusted his aiguillette, before the Eidolon King lifted a felt bicorn off its velvet bust, and placed that ludicrous hat upon his head.

"Now if I may make a bold request of you, Zane? Be brutally honest with me… How do I look?" TH asked as he assumed a dignified bearing, and a haughty expression erased all traces of humor from his visage.

My only answer was gut-clenching, rib-popping, tear-invoking, throat-shredding, and rectum-spasming laughter.

"...Oh my God… Are you fucking _serious_?!" I actually managed to wheeze out something lucid in between my breath consuming cackles.

TH's haughty expression never wavered, nor did his regal posture diminish in the slightest.

"Perhaps I should have clarified-" TH began on a testy note, but I wasn't gonna let him finish.

"-You look like a pompous clown! What the fuck is with that napoleonic outfit?!" I asked as I mirthfully coughed up my remaining lung with the death rattle of a cackle.

"This is my court dress. I am expected to don such vestments in any official political functions that I attend." TH loosened his lordly demeanor with a sigh.

"Well whatever it is, it's two and a half millennia out of fashion! Holy fuck, you look ridiculous…" I almost choked on the first complete intake of breath that I'd managed for well over a minute.

"...I know. I hate this bloody uniform with a vibrant passion." TH spat, visibly clenching up as he restrained himself from ripping away the delicate finery that festooned his person.

It took me a moment to collect my hacking breath, though the rapidly changing atmosphere definitely played a part in my quick recovery.

"...Then why don't you just wear what you want to wear?" I asked. TH sighed, and looked down at his leather-sheathed toes.

"As I stated before, this unbecoming attire is expected of me. Such whimsical liberties are denied to those who elect to represent something greater than themselves…" TH mumbled to the floor.

And that self-conscious remorse of his left me absolutely speechless.

"...It's called a mirror, TH. I can't judge that outfit fairly." I finally managed to locate my voice, and when it left my mouth, it was with a wary gruffness. TH laughed on a short, silent breath, before he lifted his gaze from the floor and onto my person.

"...These eyes… aren't what they used to be, Zane…" TH whispered in a forlorn tone.

Yup. Stunned for words again.

"...You look like an ancient French buffoon. But an authoritative French buffoon." I answered, when the silence had become too uncomfortable to bear. TH snorted, and tossed his bicorn back upon its bust, before his fingers and eyes lingered on the silk sash that stretched from his right shoulder to his left hip.

There was a coat of arms on that silken sash. While the shield and banner was of typical heraldry placement and design, the motif on the escutcheon detailed a blue-breasted kingfisher taking flight from a bird's nest of woven snakes, with a crown held tightly in the kingfisher's bill.

"Your family insignia?" I asked, indicating the coat of arms with a gesture. TH smiled down at the shield on his sash, and closed his eyes in mournful reverence.

" _...Noster Viperarum Meus Salvabit Te De Serpentes..."_ TH murmured the family motto inscribed on the coat of arms' banner.

" _From the vipers, do we protect thee."_ I replied with the rough translation. TH snorted, and shook his head.

"...Close enough." A slight smile played on TH's lips as he tossed the heraldry aside, and loosened the ornamental aiguillette from his shoulder.

"...So why does Pariah's escutcheon detail an Egret and a Lune?" I asked, looking over to the hulking Ghost at the door. For some reason, TH burst out laughing at my query, though Pariah made no movement to indicate that he even cared.

"Because my Pariah did not descend from Noble House Halcyon…" TH smiled at me, and a chill seized my veins.

"...No, my Knight hails from a far more _noble_ House, do you not, Pariah?" TH grinned at his shrouded Knight, and the barest hint of a cruel jest was betrayed in TH's voice.

Yet Pariah still did nothing.

"Or maybe he just likes the stupid colors on the shield. I still don't buy into your whole life-after-death bullshit, TH." I grumbled.

"If only we could all afford such a luxury, Zane…" TH sighed, packing away the last of his apparel.

"Now that I've enlightened you to the reason behind my unscheduled departure, I think it's best that we gloss over the details of your active assignment in my absence." TH switched track before we could entertain another time-consuming debate on religion.

"I can handle myself just fine without you. You won't be missed." I grunted, not liking the sudden authority in TH's tone.

"I beg to differ, but I'm sure that those close to you will conceive of a means to prevent any… _inconvenient circumstances_ from upsetting your official prerogative." TH didn't smile when he spoke those words. As mocking as his insinuation seemed, there was nothing vindictive in TH's expression. If anything, TH looked concerned…

"I'm not worried about Lt. Surge. Damascus is scheduled to return to active duty before the Gym Battle, and the Blackhats are having me run preparation drills out in the Gouge. This new approach to Gym Battles is something that I'm far more comfortable with, compared to the typical League bullshit." I retorted to TH's insinuation, regardless of its intent.

"...It's not the Gym Battle that worries me, Zane. It's your interview with Indigo Four that has me brooding." TH shook his head, and a knock at the suite door signified the end of our rendezvous.

"I bid you farewell, Ranger. Best of luck to you in your endeavors." TH sighed, dismissing me, before tilting his head to the Aegislash at the door. The door opened of its own accord, and a weasley butler made his trembling way past Pariah's hulking shadow and into the room.

"Mon seigneur? Your escort has just arrived at Eisenhower airbase. Shall we make ready for transit?" The butler asked in a weakened voice.

"Pariah, please…" TH sighed, and the massive wraith faded away into Distortion, freeing us all from the severity of his unpleasant seep.

"Of course. Send my luggage ahead of us. We leave with the last transport." TH extended a hand towards me.

"...Be prepared for an unexpected turnabout, Lieutenant. Beyond that warning, I dare not divulge any more details. Just… Try not to be yourself, come Indigo Four's interview…" TH faltered over the last bit, as though he feared speaking that much.

"...Whatever. Best of luck to you and your whole peace conference." I grumbled, quickly finishing our gentlemanly formality, and making to vacate the suite before TH's luggage could.

I'd just have to keep a lid on my concerns until TH got back from his summit. In truth, without TH's presence, the likelihood of a breach seemed implausible. But when you're dealing with the kind of situation that I was…

...Some manner of contingency would have gone a long way towards ensuring me a measure of comfort.

 **…**

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 **...**

 **Author's Note (Confessions/Rant):**

 _Hey y'all. Vile Slanders here._

 _This chapter has been a long time coming, hasn't it? More salt on the wound: It's only 1/3rd of the intended Chapter._

 _So what does this mean for TSoK, and why has it taken me this long to update? Well, I'll start by answering the first question._

 _TSoK is still alive. No, I'm not quitting. But some doubts of mine have not yet been addressed by myself, and these harbored doubts require addressing. One such doubt pertains to the length of my chapters. I've joked incessantly about the OUTRAGEOUS scale of my chapters in the past, though in truth, this was a cope out mechanism that I employed to fish for my audience's opinion: Are my chapters too long?_

 _When it comes to FF, reviews keep a story alive. FF authors don't receive royalties for writing their pieces. This is a hobby, an enjoyable waste of time. A lot of us feel disenfranchised with our investment of time when such an investment garners minimal attention from our viewers. Some of us have lofty goals for establishing widespread fame, and perhaps even securing a minor income boost courtesy of sponsorship._

 _If necessary, I can provide logical evidence that I am not one of the aforementioned FF authors._

 _I write because I have a story to tell, not because I have an ego to sell. But nevertheless, I thrive off of reader feedback. This is not an expression of vanity, more of the polar opposite._

 _What is the point of investing all this time and effort into a story if there is a lack of interest?_

 _Contrary to what you might be assuming about the suggestion that I just hinted at, reader interest and feedback is NOT the fault of the audience. Rather, it is the fault of the author._

 _I know that I write for a niche audience. I know that my particular literary interests appeal to a minority. I don't ever expect to pen a cult classic. The lack of reader feedback and positive reviews comes with the territory. This I have accepted._

 _But despite my acceptance, I still yearn for feedback._

 _For those of you who have gifted me with your concerns and feedback, I extend my warmest gratitude. You guys have influenced the story's progression far more than any of you probably realize._

 _I will still attempt, with every fiber of my being, to finish TSoK, regardless of reader feedback._

 _Now onto answering question 2: What the hell happened to the story's momentum?_

 _Well, there are two ways of answering that. The simplified answer is to say that I felt disenfranchised with myself, set off to write an original piece, penned two dozen concepts, built NUMEROUS worlds of my own, compiled original lore, world elements, and character designs..._

 _...And then fell short at writing a single initial draft._

 _And then there is the convoluted answer. The personal answer. The darker answer. The truer answer._

 _Come shortly before the turn of 2017, I completely tuned out, and just gave up._

 _Not just in writing, oh no. I gave up on everything._

 _I kept my job, a roof over my head, my closest of relations (barely), and a surprising amount of my residual sanity, but otherwise: I fucking gave up on the world._

 _2016-2017 has been a trying year of my life. A yearlong ordeal, if you will. I've never invested so much of myself in hope. I've never put forth this amount of my conviction, set aside this level of my cynicism, let go of this amount of misanthropic sentiment..._

 _...Just to see all that negativity be proven justified. Just to see confirmation that my original nihilistic idealism was well-founded._

 _...Just to see the new me, the hoping me, the "let's make world peace happen me," proven aught but a fool._

 _For the longest time, I received ridicule (criticism, if I'm to be authentic) that my worlds incorporated too ignorant a society. That my designs always pivoted on a naively self-destructive societal model; a model that was completely unrelatable to the real world because of just how improbable it seemed: that humanity would realize such widespread fatalism and idiocy._

 _And despite the hypothetical value of my critics' arguments..._

 _...I was proven right, July 26th, 2016._

 _And I felt neither satisfied nor vindicated by the revelation. If anything, the new me felt both disgusted and violated._

 _Widespread idiocy_ _ _had_ won. And on November 9th, 2016..._

 _Widespread animosity, corruption, and apathy had plunged the last coffin-nail into my newfound hopes._

 _I came to hate the world for what it had spurned. I hated mankind for what we had decided to settle for in our indolence. I hated the system, for what it had unjustly established._

 _And I hated myself for daring to believe in hope, and for daring to believe in the common goodwill of mankind._

 _For the longest stretch, I let myself waste in apathy. Fuck the world, fuck humanity, fuck all these lazy, ignorant, elitist, willfully misled fucktards. Fuck the hope of tomorrow's earth, and fuck the fate of the current dominant species._

 _Just fuck it all._

 _I wanted a revolution. Not a bloody and extreme revolution; but a revolution of morality; a revolution of ideals; a resurgence of information; an exchange of goodwill; a promise of a better tomorrow that I could believe in..._

 _I wanted a global society. I wanted borders to exist only in history books. I wanted an international culture, that regarded harmless differences as little more than personality quirks. I wanted distinctions to be worn as an identity, not as a merit._

 _I wanted to believe that man was finally capable of realizing the extent of our hubris. I wanted the majority of humanity to realize that the only real distinction worthy of cruel arbitration was the pursuit of selfish desires at the expense of society's wellbeing._

 _I wanted a bunch of monkeys to realize that the accumulation of shiny shit does not merit any value or relevance to an individual's existence._

 _I wanted humanity to overcome their greed and self-righteousness, to set aside their fear and elitism; to embrace their brethren of different creeds, races, sex, and cultures._

 _I wanted humanity to pursue the distinction between what is human and what is animal to the utmost limit of our definitions._

 _And I was proven a fool in all of my vain hopes and desires._

 _We're just a bunch of monkeys, racing to collect the biggest pile of shiny shit, if only to imply a frivolous value to our frivolous lives; at the expense of every other living creature on this earth, most notably ourselves._

 _And I hate humanity for killing the romantic human._

 _I'm still in recovery from the catastrophic letdown. I wanted to believe that compassion, empathy, and rationality were more widespread than elitism, greed, and paranoia. I dared to believe differently._

 _And now I'm even more disconnected with the world that surrounds me. I feel evermore an oceanic oyster in a sea of dry sand._

 _I am filled with loathing; for myself, for my culture, and for my very species._

 _...And yet, I still hope._

 _Maybe, we Millennials will carry on with the traditions initially set in stone by the cancerous baby-boomers. Maybe, we'll all submit to futility, justify our barbarism as human nature, accept our flaws without compromise; just as those self-destructive idiots did before us. Maybe we're damned as a generation, to be so caught up in the pursuit of fame and material wealth that we fail to realize the repercussions of our actions._

 _...But hey,_

 _...There's always Generation Z to stock hope in. Let's all hope that our offspring realize the romantic human that we failed to achieve._

 _Because if Generation Z follows in the fatalistic footsteps of their fore-bearers..._

 _Humanity, both romantic and primeval, will die as a species._

 _I hope that we realize the extent of our hubris before it's too late, because otherwise: these stories we cherish will become one with the dust of their creators._

 _...And no one will ever experience the conceptions realized solely by romantic man again._

 _Here's to romantic man, to my fellow dreamers, to both the writers, and to their readers._

 _Here's to hoping that romantic man surfaces and establishes dominance before primeval man damns us all._

 _My pseudonym is Vile Slanders, and I wholeheartedly impart this message._


	12. Chapter X part 2: Reconciliation

_._

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 **The Saga of Kings, Book I: Hero**

 _Written by,_

 **Vile M.F. Slanders**

 **.\\./.\\./.\\./.\\./.\\./.**

 ***T...T...T...T***

 **I-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-I**

 **\\_v_v_v_/**

 **\\-.-.**.-.-/**

 **V-._.-V**

 **\\.^./**

 **V**

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" _ **Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,**_

 _ **Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,**_

 _ **qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,**_

 _ **quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.**_

 _ **nam castum esse decet pium poetam**_

 _ **ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est;**_

 _ **qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,**_

 _ **si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici,**_

 _ **et quod pruriat incitare possunt,**_

 _ **non dico pueris, sed his pilosis**_

 _ **qui duros nequeunt movere lumbos.**_

 _ **vos, quod milia multa basiorum**_

 _ **legistis, male me marem putatis?**_

 _ **pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo."**_

 _ **.**_

" _ **I will sodomize and face-fuck you,**_

 _ **Aurelius, you cocksucker; Furius, you little bitch,**_

 _ **since you think that my little poems**_

 _ **have gone soft and I must not be too upright.**_

 _ **It's true; the devoted poet should stand erect**_

 _ **in his values, but not necessarily in his little**_

 _ **poems, which are truly witty and charming**_

 _ **when they're a little soft, and not too stiff,**_

 _ **but can still cause a little tingling-**_

 _ **I don't just mean for youth, but for hairy men**_

 _ **who can't make their own loins stand upright!**_

 _ **You! You read about my "many kisses"**_

 _ **and doubt I'm fully a man?**_

 _ **I will sodomize and face-fuck you.**_

 _-Gaius Valerius Catullus, one of the Neoteric Poets, in "Carmen XVI," his response to Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus and Marcus Furius Bibaculus's criticism of "Carmen V." Born 84 BC in the province of Gallia Citerior. Died 54 BC, location unknown. Exalted hero to all poets._

 **-v-**

 **Chapter X: Reconciliation (Part 2 of 3)**

My Tact. pad's muffled humming roused me from a restless sleep. Shoving Mac's head off my lap, and grimacing at the puddle of Munchlax drool that had drenched the left leg of my pants, I made to intercept my communications device as it buzzed across the hotel's carpeting.

I glanced at the caller ID, and groaned.

-It was Fuck-Nutts with an early morning hail.

"Zane! We've got a problem!" I had only just tapped 'accept' and lifted the Tact. pad to my ear when Chris told me the last thing I wanted to hear.

"What is it?" I asked, a cold sensation rising from my chest.

"It's Indigo Four! They reschedule your interview-" Chris began, but I interrupted him with a snort.

-Why had I even taken Chris seriously in the first place?

"So what? Look, I don't care if it's two days from now or two weeks from now-" I yawned, but Chris seemed to think that I was the one who needed to take this call a bit more seriously.

"IT'S TODAY, YOU IDIOT!" Chris roared in my ear.

That killed my condescending yawn pretty damn quick.

"What-!?"

- _Today?!_

"-I just got the notification ten minutes ago! I already tried to negotiate for a later date, but Indigo Four insists that it has to be today! And that's not even the worst of it!" Chris sounded like he was gonna have an aneurism, and I was beginning to feel like I was gonna have a heart attack.

We had all of two hours of rehearsal under my belt, and I'd blown every minute of it on pissing Chris off!

"...Indigo Four switched hosts as well. You're not being interviewed by Sanandreas. They're pulling Taggart off his morning talk show to interview you, _on a live broadcast_." Chris's voice had gone faint, and a sudden surge of rage warmed the cold hollow forming in my chest.

"Taggart-?! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!" I spat into the mouthpiece.

"-I'm not joking around with you, Zane! The League is pulling a fucking gotcha on you! This whole thing reeks of a setup!" Chris was panicking, same as me.

"A gotcha?! What the fuck did I do to deserve a gotcha?!" Mac was waking up behind me, as I rifled through my kit for want of a pristine dress uniform.

"Oh, I don't know! Maybe they're fucking pissed about having to pay the insurance premium on the Cerulean Gym! Maybe they're still pissed about the scandal you pulled in Pewter! Or maybe they're fucking pissed at you for the whole legal fiasco going down in the League Registry over your Vermilion Gym Battle! Pick one! Or better yet, pick all three!" Chris was screaming at me like it was all my fault-

-Actually, it kinda was all my fault…

"...Oh fuck me…" I moaned, tugging on a fresh change of Class A slacks and fumbling with my brass coat buttons.

"...And they're cutting their attack dog loose on you. Zane, do you have any idea who Taggert is?" Chris asked in a shaking voice.

Oh yeah. I knew who Taggart is. Every Ranger does…

-And every single Ranger wanted to gut Taggart's ass alive before leaving him to die in the Frontier too.

David Ames Taggart. Shock jock fanatic, arguably the loudest propagandist on the loudest commercial media outlet. A self proclaimed Ranger-hating fucktard and mon-humping extraordinaire.

"I'm gonna disembowel that ignorant motherfucking sensationalist-" I growled, but a bleating Chris shushed that line pronto.

"THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO DO! THAT'S WHY THEY SUBSTITUTED SANANDREAS WITH TAGGART! THEY'RE TRYING TO FRAME THE RANGERS, YOU IDIOT! DON'T EVEN FANTASIZE ABOUT HARMING A HAIR ON TAGGART'S HEAD!" Chris roared on his end, and I pulled the painfully loud Tact. pad away from my ear with a lightning reflex.

"...They're setting you up, Zane. Indigo wants you, _and the Ranger Corps,_ out of their League, and this interview could provide them with the public condonation required to ban you and your branch from the competition for good. Don't play into their hands. When you get onto the stage, you need to be the spitting image of tolerance and courtesy, no matter what insult Taggart throws at you. He's going to hit you where it hurts the most, lie his ass off whenever it serves his purposes, and you need to just take it all _with a smile on your face._ " Chris panted through the earpiece.

"I'm just supposed to just sit there and laugh at his fucked up jabs?! I'm supposed to pretend that this guy hasn't shat all over the Rangers since the day his programmed first aired?!" I spat on my end.

"THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DO!" Chris was losing his head, but given that I couldn't even talk about my medical condition without hauling off and hitting someone, Chris had a damn good reason to lose his head.

Taggart would sooner talk about my _mental condition_ than he would even think of bringing up my medical condition.

"...I can't do it." I told Chris in the calmest voice I could muster.

Truer words had never been spoken. I was already ragged furious, and I knew damn well that I didn't have half as much self control as I had bloodthirsty self-righteousness.

"You have to. Skipping the interview isn't an option. You have precisely two hours to get yourself to the studio. We're pretty busing prepping this place for Taggart's arrival, but we'll try and squeeze in one last rehearsal before air time. You need to prepare for the worst, because Taggart is going to be bringing the worst to the table. He can ruin you, Zane. Absolutely ruin you. All he has to do is press the right button, and he'll have his loose cannon of a Ranger caught on live television. Don't be Taggart's white whale. Now get your head ready for a skull fucking, and man the fuck up." Chris hung up without another word, and I was left staring at my silent Tact. pad, rendered utterly helpless.

I stared at that goddamn Tact. pad for ten minutes straight, before my eyes snapped to the sleeping Munchlax on the floor of my hotel room.

"...I can't do it…" I whispered to Mac in a broken voice.

…

Chris's rented studio was awash with activity. I'd previously thought that TH owned a carnival of servants and luggage, but the Eidolon King's couriers and baggage was absolutely nothing compared to the kit of an Indigo sponsored talk show host.

Taggart's cadre staffed somewhere between fifty and sixty assistants, from cosmetologists and wardrobe organizers, to audience coordinators, lighting specialists, wire-runners, audio techs, and cameramen.

There was a literal tower of of crated gear sitting in the street outside the studio, and Indigo Pidgeots with payloads under wing were still being escorted in by Vermilion's Striker Class Skarmories.

But that was just the staff and the business appliances. There was a fricken rave at the main door of the studio, as audience hopefuls and Taggart fans rallied to the scene just to purchase their official Taggart-branded apparel and signed posters of their hero.

And one of those posters was plastered on the staff entry door of the studio, capturing Taggart in his iconic stern faced and finger pointing poise above the patriotic colored catchphrase of his show.

" _Seize the Truth"_

-The veritable battle cry of an expansive caste of sofa-warriors.

Ignoring the poster, I entered the studio's rear access, damn near bowling over Lt. Roscoe on his way out for a smoke break.

"Lieutenant." Roscoe waited for me to salute his senior self, before opening the door to the studio's green room, and following me into Chris's makeshift rehearsal room.

"How long do we have before Taggart arrives?" I grumbled to Roscoe.

"He's already here." Roscoe answered in an expressionless voice.

"...You see him yet?" I asked in an undertone.

"Are there handcuffs on my wrists?" Roscoe asked, raising his unbound forearms to eye level.

-That was a ' _No'._

"...How am I gonna play this?" I whispered.

"You're asking me?" Roscoe snorted, cracking his knuckles.

"I'd ask TH at this point." I hissed in an undertone.

"It'd still be your cross." Roscoe shook his head in disgust, clearly perturbed by my admission.

"Roscoe, do me a favor: knock me the fuck out now." I begged from the bottom of my pitiful heart, and good'ol Roscoe just laughed like I'd just made a joke.

"I don't envy you one bit. But if you want my advice? View this as another S-class mission. You've got a suicidal job to do, and it's gotta get done." Roscoe assumed a more serious air for his coaching, and I shuddered on a worried breath.

"...Then you might want to hold on to this for me." I swallowed, unclasping Doug's knife from the bandolier hidden beneath my coat.

Roscoe accepted my knife with a severe look in his eye.

"I'm not even gonna ask why you thought it was a good idea to bring this on stage…" Roscoe whispered darkly.

Truthfully? That knife was a comfort thing. But after thinking about why Doug's knife was comfort thing to me…

...Yeah, that knife and its capabilities weren't quite so comforting in this situation.

"Where the hell is Chris?" I grumbled.

"Being held up by Taggart's crew. Something to do with the proper exposure of ambient lighting or some such bullshit." Roscoe muttered.

"You the only Blackhat here?"

"Yup. Lt. Col Rionaldo grounded my ass for disciplinary. Punishment for dumping piss off the side of Tisiphone as we flew over downtown Saffron. Lt. Col Dickbag just doesn't have the sense of humor he once did." Roscoe grumbled.

The room was silent for a moment, as Roscoe's confession sank into my shaken demeanor. But when I could finally render the faculties required for speech, I only had one thing to say to the grumpy Blackhat before me.

"You're a sick fuck, Roscoe."

And an amused snort was all that I received in reply.

Cue a flustered Chris bursting into the green room. What a timely moment to wrap my debriefing up.

One look at the hopeless expression on my face told Chris everything he didn't want to hear. Taking his time to access his approach, Chris let me simmer in brooding silence.

"...Okay-" Chris began on a winded note.

"-No." I cut him off dead.

"Zane, you need to-"

"Just shut the fuck up, Chris. I don't know if I'd rather puke or break something right now, and you're not making the decision any easier."

Just let me have the silence. Let me savor the calm before the storm.

"...You will comply with Mister Lebreau's directives, _Ranger._ Regardless of your current state of mind." Roscoe growled from the backdrop.

This circus was being treated like a fucking Ranger Op? Could've fooled me.

"Lay it on him, Chris. If Zane can live through a Snorlax attack, then he can live through a Taggart encounter." Roscoe prompted my hesitant PR Agent into speaking.

"...Zane, I'm not going to sugar coat this. We're looking at a shitshow. Open house studio; live broadcast; short notice; plenty of hype. And I just finished grilling Taggart's script consultant. He's done his homework on you. Taggart knows all your weak spots, and we all know that's all he's going to talk about." Chris audibly swallowed, and I struggled to maintain the dignified bearing expected of an officer of the Corps.

"Taggart is going to push every button you have. He's going to do his damndest to trigger you. You need to keep your head on during the assault, but we can't have you deferring to submission either. When Taggart hits you, you hit back. He's a propagandist and a sensationalist, so his greatest weakness is fact. Correct Taggart when he spews his garbage, and do not address the crowd should they boo you out. Open house means all are welcome, and there are a lot more Taggart supporters than Ranger supporters in quiet downtown Vermilion." Chris took a deep breath, and I forced myself to view this pep-talk as a Spec-Ops debriefing.

"Keep your head in the game. Remember: _people are watching you._ Everything you say and do will reflect on the _Ranger Corps._ You're as good as a spokesperson for your division. People will judge the Rangers as fiercely as they judge you. Now I wanted to get a last minute rehearsal in, but Taggart's not giving us any ground. He's arranged for a backstage meet and greet with the audience, claims it's to drum up viewer count. Taggart is talking to his crowd, and you're expected to talk with your crowd. So put on a happy face. We're just forty-five minutes from air time. I'll meet you at the prompter's box in forty minutes." Chris swallowed hard, and made to leave the green room.

"...The fuck am I even doing here, Roscoe?" I asked after Chris had vacated the premise.

"Getting the officer's crash course in learning how to suck up to command. Congratulations Second-Lieutenant. Welcome to the high class." Roscoe grunted, as he stifled his cigar.

…

Three people.

In a studio designed to accommodate two-hundred and fifty spectators, only three of those seats were occupied by folks who wanted to exchange pleasantries with the Fucking Bastard.

I was just beginning to understand how underhanded and manipulative showbiz really is.

The main attraction for my backstage pass was one scowling Ranger and a moody Blackhat.

The main attraction for Taggart's backstage pass was a broadcasting icon, complimented by live music entertainment, autographs, paraphernalia, expensive catering, and a host of super-modelesque wait staff.

Taggart even had more sofas than we did.

Given the amount of organization and expenditure on Taggart's part; it wasn't to hard to figure out that this had been planned well in advance. Just securing five-star cuisine and a gig with the local talent took a bare minimal of a two-week reservation notice.

We, on the other hand, had only a two hour notice, and we were spending every second of it in preparation for a reaming.

There wasn't even enough time for Chris's staff to order take out for the three sorry sons of bitches that I was charged with entertaining.

Fortunately, Roscoe had brought plenty of beer, so our crowd of three wasn't all that unhappy.

Unfortunately, Roscoe hadn't brought enough party favors to warrant anything other than a discrete dispersion of the yeast, so we couldn't exactly advertise our one and only benefaction to the entire studio.

Taggart had us by the short and curlies. We looked woefully unprepared for this interview, because that was exactly what we were.

But the public didn't know about Indigo's nasty little scheme, so as far as appearances were concerned…

...Indigo maintained a notable advantage over us.

Then there was _our_ expectations.

We'd been led to believe that I'd be introducing myself to Sanandreas, Indigo's gorgeous and well-spoken anchor-woman. It was supposed to have been a casual introduction. Hi, my name is Zane; I'm a Ranger; this what I do in the Ranger Corps; this is how you can contribute to the Ranger Corps…

...Our talking points had been designed in expectation of a civil and informative encounter.

Instead, I was mentally preparing myself for being interrupted every time I tried to answer a question, and having accusations shouted over my every outspoken defense.

To make it worse, if I actually did manage to keep my cool and make Taggart's argument look foolish, he'd just cut my mic, and continue to scream accusations at defenseless me.

I'd seen Taggart's show before. The man was a religion short of a televangelist. Taggart's crowd didn't necessarily love Taggart for his brusque tactics and sensationalism…

...Taggart's crowd loved him because he empowered their ideology, and vindicated their beliefs.

Fanaticism. That's what kept Taggart's show on the air, and there was so much fanaticism in xenophobic Kanto, that Taggart's show was listed as one of the most successful talk shows aired this decade.

And now it was my turn to be demonized and dehumanized by a man blinded by his own ego.

 _I fucking love my job._

I rendezvoused with Chris outside the designated location. The cameras were already rolling, David Taggart was seated on his cushy sofa, the audience's racket had already been subdued by the Audience Coordinators, and we were all just waiting for Indigo's mother station to uplink with the live feed from Vermilion.

"How'd it go?" Chris asked in a low voice, never taking his shutter-shade covered eyes off of Taggart.

"Made three new friends. Which is three more than I thought I was gonna get." I replied. Chris shook his head in dismay.

"...I feel responsible for this." Chris muttered in an undertone.

I wasn't gonna say anything to contest Chris's guilt. I really wanted Chris to shoulder the blame. I already hated him, so what was there to lose in blaming him?

"Zane, just promise me you'll get through this, okay? Next time I make the arrangements, I'll double down on the contracts and hire extra lawyers just to prevent this from ever happening again." Chris was practically begging me, which was only sparking a note of irritation in my shaken demeanor.

"...How bad would it look if I punched Taggart in the dick?" I asked in a jocular tone, inciting a predictable panic response from Chis.

"...It was a joke, asshole. Keep your skirt on." I grumbled over Chris's nonsensical jabbering.

That admission seemed to calm my PR agent more than it did me.

"...Our mutual friends gonna bail us out?" I asked Chris in an undertone.

"This is my department, Zane. I'm the best in the business at what I do. High Command expects me to keep this situation contained, which is why I'm so damn worried about _you_." Chris shot me a glare.

"...You want to punch me in a rehearsal? I can handle that. You trying to gut a nationally acclaimed presenter on a live broadcast? That might be outside my expertise. Let's not find out today, okay?" Chris's cool was waning as mine failed. Gritting my teeth in anticipation, I straightened my shoulders and stiffened my back.

"Good morning, Sanandreas. This is David Taggart from Taggart's Truth. We are broadcasting live from beautiful Vermilion Bay-" A sudden announcement from the stage brought a shrill cheer from the crowd, and David Taggart spread his arms to the crowd with a smile, basking in all their praise.

"-And we have a very special guest who we'll be questioning today, if the audience will join me in welcoming Second-Lieutenant Zane Bastard of the Ranger Corps…" Taggart turned to face me for the first time, a bored expression worn on his face as his palms clapped out a slow introduction for your's truly.

I took to the stage without a word or a second look to Chris, and walked right into the baking spotlights.

Marching my way towards my designated sofa, I maintained a stoic expression and a disciplined poise as I stepped directly into the Brink.

David Taggart was relatively young for an Indigo talk show host. Though he'd just entered his forties, Taggart looked older than most people his age. Crisp greying hair was professionally kept in check by products more expensive than gold on the market. The makeup on his face discretely disguised any discolorations or blemishes of the skin, save for the sharp wrinkles that fanned out across his cheeks and forehead whenever Taggart smiled. Puffy sockets enhoused brilliantly blue eyes, faux lenses worn to offset Taggart's rather plain features. A five-thousand Sandz tailor cut suit handsomely hid Taggart's bulging belly and flabby chest from every camera angle, and a watch worth twice as much as the suit festooned the left wrist of my host.

To call Taggart a toad would've been a slight against all amphibians. Refraining from sneering when I met his sly eyes required more effort than I was capable of. Turning the rising corner of my mouth into a dangerous grin, I ended Taggart's applause by seizing his hand, and firmly shaking it in a curt gesture.

Just enough pressure to invoke pain; not enough time to permit for Taggart's reflexive recoil.

The audience's clapping ended, and a low chorus of boos sounded out as I took my seat. Taggart raised his eyebrows at me as I made a scene out of testing the upholstery of my chair, bouncing in my seat for want of a snug fit.

"...Quite the handshake, Lieutenant." Taggart's voice subtly implied a grudge, as he wrung the fingers of his right hand in the camera's blindside.

"I'm well known for my handshakes, Taggart. I always aim to make my first introduction the _last_ introduction."

If there were Rangers sitting in the audience, they would've been whistling and cheering for my bravado. But as it was, the tough ass implication of my opening statement went right over the civis' heads.

I would've felt awkward at the audience's silence, but I was too busy ignoring all the screaming going down in my head. Taggart hadn't missed my insinuation, and his gloating look was informing me that I was dog meat to his palate.

 _...Tell you what, Taggart: let me put a knife in your hands. Let's see how well you fare in a one on one. Don't worry, I won't use my knife… Wouldn't need one to end your greasy ass anyways…_

"So I understand that you have a Gym battle coming up within the month. A Gym battle with a national hero, no less. How do you think you're going to fare against Vermilion's legendary Lieutenant Surge?" Taggart asked me in a business like manner, but I could smell the trap he'd laid with that seemingly benign question.

 _...Don't get cocky, don't insult Lt. Surge or his fanbase, don't alienate the military, and do not start strangling Taggart's triple-chinned neck-_

"I can already tell it's gonna be a rough ride. Lt. Surge is no slouch in the League, and he's well versed in my line of thinking. Both of us come from similar professions; both of us look at conflict a bit differently than most people do. This isn't going to be another gym battle. This is going to be a war." I replied in a deathly serious voice.

"So you consider yourself an equal to Lt. Surge then?" Taggart smugly asked, and the audience's boos drowned me out before I could even open my mouth to answer.

"...Hardly an equal." I carried on when the crowd had finally quieted some. Taggart was grinning at me in the most condescending way imaginable.

"Lt. Surge has decades of experience on me, both in the League and in the service. To say he maintains the advantage in our coming match is an understatement; but to rule out the possibility of some of my wildcard antics paying off? A military leader as seasoned as Lt. Surge knows better than to underestimate me." I replied with due honesty, and the audience's silence told of their concession to my reasoning.

Taggart was still in the lead, but I'd just scored a point. No one was gonna touch me for that one-

"-Let's talk about these wildcard antics of yours. Starting with your Pewter City Gym match." Taggart smirked at me, and my single point tally went back to zed.

"Records of the event indicate that you were cited for kiting, an illegal tactic where a challenger deploys a pokemon from a combat classification higher than the challenger's division rank. In this particular case, you deployed an Onix belonging to a classification two whole ranks above your division. That sounds like cheating to most people, Lieutenant. However did you earn the Boulder Badge during that sham of a match?" Taggart asked with a sleazy smile, and his crowd began to boo me again.

"It was a sham, and Brock Aissatou can attest to that. I come from the Corps, Taggart. We have a different Trainer accountability program than the one employed by the League. I have been trained and certified for the deployment of D5CUs, or Delta-Five-Counter-Units; the heaviest of artillery in the armed forces. This equates to the League's qualification level of "Championship Trainer." I proved this to Brock during my Gym battle against him, and the Pewter City Gym Leader was both intelligent and innovative enough to not only recognize my credentials; but to also bump me up two whole League ranks so as to legalize the competitive deployment of my D5CU." I could feel my neck shaking. The phrasing of Taggart's questions were already getting under my skin.

But discrete accusations were too subtle for Taggart's average fan. They wanted to be told what to think, not left to figure out what had been implied. I knew that Taggart was going to switch tactics sometime during the interview…

...I just didn't think he'd do it so soon.

"That is a blatant lie, and you know it!" Taggart was suddenly animated in his chair, finger jabbing towards my coordinates, face twisting with anger.

And his crowd was right there beside him with all of that pent up fervor. The rallying cheer that followed Taggart's accusation was as loud as any I'd heard in the Cerulean Gym. Nobody watching this broadcast wanted to know a damn thing about Zane Bastard.

They'd only tuned in to see him bleed.

"...What part was a lie?" I asked, challenging Taggart and his audience with a Ranger's dead-eyed grin.

"You should've been thrown out of the League for cheating! If anyone else had tried to kite their way through a Gym battle, they would never have been allowed to touch a pokedex again-!" Taggart began, but I decided to employ his own tactics against him, and cut him off with a smirk.

"-Actually, the penalty for kiting is a six-month suspension from competition, but I wouldn't expect _you_ to know that."

If you thought I was in the red before the interview…

...Well motherfucker, I am the Guns of Navarone now.

Shots had been fired. Taggart's crowd was giving me their loudest boo yet, and I was content to sit back and smirk at my grinning adversary, basking in both his idiot fans' ire and Taggart's carefully practiced calm.

"I know a lot more about League policy than you do, Lieutenant-"

"-Sure you do. Corporations tell their shareholders everything. The rest of us get to foot the bill whenever corporate empires neglect to inform us of their policies."

The audience's boos were now replaced with catcalls. I'd broken even with Taggart's score in a stunning double hitter.

Go ahead and call me a cheater. But don't forget, your record proves that David Taggart is a corrupt and greedy asshole.

And if you're gonna call my character into question…

...Then it's only fitting that I fight fire with fire.

"You want to continue discussing the League, Lieutenant? I think that's a great idea. Let's ask the audience if it's a great idea. Does everyone here want to hear about Zane's competition records in the League?" Taggart addressed the audience, and a mob answered him with a chanted _yes_.

"Pristine. Never lost a match." I boasted, fluffing the collar of my Class A with a cocky smirk.

"...The Cerulean City Gym. What happened to it?" Taggart asked, his voice going lethal with intent.

"Oh that? I just got into a fight with the earth. The earth lost, naturally." I was trying so hard not to chuckle. If it wasn't for my racing heart rate and throbbing temples, I might've been able to convince myself of the _I don't give a fuck_ attitude that I was currently exuding.

"Six million Sandz in accrued damages, and that's just the League's condemned facility. You devastated Cerulean City's infrastructure with that stunt. There are families in the central precinct without functional plumbing because of you-"

"-Thank God the damages were contained to the wealthy central precinct. So a couple billionaires have to fly their private fleets out to Hoenn in order to take a shower now. Do real people actually care about the upper class's dignity?"

Holy fuck. There were people in the audience who were actually _cheering_ for me after that one. I'm giving myself an extra point just for that.

"So you attacked the successful for being successful? Don't you think that's a little petty? A little juvenile? Should I say… a little _radical?"_ Taggart posed, an ugly twist curling one corner of his mouth.

"Depends on what you consider success. If you draw the line at owning more than everyone else does, your subjective definition of success is morally fulfilled. But if you choose to look at how the successful became subjectively successful… Well let's just say that I don't consider getting away with murder something worth lauding over." I replied, a nasty grimace rising on my own face.

"Are you oblivious to the fact that you're a hypocrite?! Everything you've just said incriminates your League records! You've been _successful_ at getting away with murder from day one, and I'm not just talking about the League either!" Taggart was shouting at me. Too bad for his paltry intimidation tactics, I'd been exposed to far scarier, meaner, and louder drill sergeants in the service. That shit may work on fourteen year old girls suffering from an identity crisis, and it may piss off motherfuckers that are smarter than you, Taggart…

...But I'm not your average victim. I'm immune to that bullshit, because I'm a whole lot better at it than you are.

"Really? How far back have I been getting away with murder?" I eagerly took the bait, knowing full well where Taggart's line was taking me.

Go ahead and call me a womanizing, pokemon murdering, wise-cracking drunkard. Put it on a badge, so that I can wear it proudly-

"-According to your service record, you've been quite literally getting away with murder since you transferred to Viridian Outpost." Taggart dropped that bombshell with the meanest smirk yet.

-Not what I had been expecting to hear.

"...You've piqued my curiosity. Just what do you know about my service record in the Corps?" My voice had fallen to its lowest octave. My very breath was _daring_ Taggart to step into a field that he knew absolutely nothing about-

"...I know that you have yourself a pretty gruesome Ranger death count in the Corps. The casualties claimed under your leadership are rather excessive, given that you've been in a position of command for less than a year."

I don't know how Taggart was able to smirk at me when he said that.

The whole goddamn world went silent, save for a humming ring in my ears.

I was cold, frozen stiff; unable to comprehend this situation or how everything previously discussed had led up to this.

The scoreboard was forgotten. The audience was just blotches speckled with eyes and and vibrant colors in my peripheral vision. Unoccupied space seemed to blur around the only object of interest, as his greasy smile widened, fully exposing his tobacco stained teeth.

"What did you just say?" My voice stirred the intense calm that the universe had assumed, and my mouth's every movement felt hot and heavy.

-Why was the ringing only getting louder?

"Eight months ago, on your thirty-sixth mission in special operations, you and two other Rangers in your detachment were charged with the tactical elimination of Viridian's Ursaring population; or the murder of newly-born Teddiursa cubs, horrifying as that practice is; when your Commanding Officer died during an unforeseen Stantler incursion. Care to tell us how your Commanding Officer died?" Taggart asked, his nasty grin never lessening.

 _Doug died in my fucking arms, during one of the most personal and painful moments of my life. The man was closer to me than my own father ever was. Why would I share that sacred burden with the likes of you-?_

"...I find your silence compelling. Regardless of whatever killed Captain Douglas Fitzgerald, I'm sure that _you_ had no meaningful role in it." Taggart's sarcasm seemed so wrong. How could he even say something like that? Just what was he trying to imply-?

"Let's move this into recent events. Let's talk about the events of four months ago, during the Venomoth's annual courting season in Viridian. I understand that you took command of a unit deployed to sector Delta? A unit, whose numbers were cut down to a third of their original personnel count during their campaign in Sector Delta?" Taggart grinned.

"Those Rangers were already dead by the time I got to a scrub station! I led a fucking rescue effort, not the original detachment-!" Taggart motioned to the left stage, and the speakers promptly stopped playing my voice.

Taggart had just cut my mic.

"This is a live broadcast, Zane, so I'm going to have to ask you to mind your language." Taggart's voice was riddled with smug, and the audience just laughed at my galled expression.

-How was this even funny?! Taggart wasn't telling the whole story! He wasn't even telling the true story! What the hell was going on-?!

"Now that you've given me a chance to speak, why don't we discuss another lovely little blemish in your service record, perhaps the most telling record of your service to the Corps. Let's discuss your first command. Let's discuss Echo Squad." Taggart leaned across the sofa and stared me in my disbelieving eyes.

The floor had fallen away from the world, and I was left floating in the vacuum, overcome with a stupor.

 _-Don't you fucking dare._

"This is by and far, the most tragic military record I've ever seen. A six man unit, well equipped, well trained, and known to you personally left Viridian Prime Outpost with an auspicious mission into sector Charlie six months ago. A six man unit under your command, known as Echo Squad. Three days after leaving Viridian Prime outpost, every member of Echo Squad was pronounced KIA by the Corps obituary. Every member of Echo Squad, save for one… _You._ " Taggart settled back into his chair with a sigh, while I just gaped at him.

"Everywhere you go, everything you do, everyone you touch… just seems to die, Lieutenant. Though I don't merely question your culpability, Zane… I question the culpability of the entire Corps. When they place their units under the custody of inexperienced and incompetent commanders, people will inescapably end up dead." Taggart gestured to the left stage again, and a buzz at my mic indicated that he'd returned my right to speak.

But I had nothing to say. I couldn't believe this was happening. The anger, the hurt, the sorrow… it was all gone.

All I felt was a fear. A fear I never wanted to know.

...The same fear I'd felt back when the Snorlax had bitten Pete in two…

"...How can you even sleep at night, when you have so much blood on your hands?" Taggart asked the shellshocked me.

And I answered him in the only way I could. I answered Taggart the same way I'd answered the Snorlax when he'd subjected me to that awful and helpless fear…

Things happened so suddenly that I was barely conscious of the progression of events. One moment, I was feeling something warm and wet pooling in my eyes…

...The next moment, Taggart was underneath me, his back pinned to the floor.

And I was putting my best effort forth into silencing and exterminating a callous monster, my fists flying into his meekly defended face, obscenities and death threats screamed amidst a torrential storm of spit and tears. Blood was flecking my Class A's olive collar and my tear streaked chin, as I pulverized the monster that had dare to make shit of my Echo...

...And then someone tried to stop me, but I didn't recognize a person when I retaliated.

I just saw another piece of the same monster, and I attacked it in kind.

Someone stronger and better versed in combat than me stepped into the slaughter, and Roscoe dragged my screaming ass off a flailing camera technician, before hauling my still livid form to the backstage.

Roscoe was shouting my name over the animalistic howls flying from my shredded lungs, but I couldn't hear a goddamn word.

The moment an opening presented itself, I took the swing. I earned my liberation with a single blow to Roscoe's mouth, bouncing his head off the wall I'd bodily driven him into.

Before Roscoe could even pick himself up off the ground, I'd disappeared. Disappeared from the cameras, the lights, the studio, and the world.

And I didn't want to find myself.

...Because then I'd have to face everything that I'd done.

…

I came to at a lonely terrace on Vermilion's naval wharf; eyes dried, throat raw, and knuckles thoroughly busted.

I'd been there yet again, mulling over the event, looking at it from other angles, trying to figure out how I could've saved them…

...But like a disease, the memory of my helplessness kept dragging me backwards in time, forcing me to relive that day from a singular perspective.

I couldn't keep going there. I couldn't keep asking _what if._ I couldn't find a solution to a problem that had already been irrevocably resolved.

I couldn't save them. If I could've, then I would've.

I had to stop going back…

...But it was waiting for me, every time I closed my eyes. Every time the adrenaline hit. Every time I saw someone hurt. Every time I was hurt…

Like an Echo, it just kept coming back...

Then I realized why that sound wasn't going away. My Tact. Pad was ringing.

...What did my Tact. Pad have to do with Echo anyways?

"Lieutenant Bastard reporting." I answered the hail without even checking the caller ID.

Then I made to hurl that loathsome little device straight into Vermilion Bay.

"If you throw that Porygon into the ocean, there isn't a force on earth that's gonna save your ass." Captain Lewis's tone was aught but stern caution on her end.

I paused mid toss, and reluctantly brought the Tact. pad back to my ear with a shaking hand. But I couldn't say a thing.

"...You had better be on the other end of this call, Ranger." Captain Lewis sounded worried. I could just make out the racket of a minor scuffle going on in the background.

Someone was trying to take the phone away from Captain Lewis, and she wasn't letting them have it.

"...Lieutenant Zane Bastard, reporting in sir." My numb voice muttered into the mouthpiece.

The sounds of the scuffle ended abruptly, and Captain Lewis's voice returned to my ear.

"You fucked up, Zane."

-Tell me something I don't know.

"...I don't care." I replied with a hollow voice.

"You cared enough to punch Taggart in the face during a live broadcast. How are we going to fix this now?" Captain Lewis hissed.

"Can't fix it..." I muttered, kicking a pebble through the port fence and into the sea.

"-What?" Captain Lewis spat.

"It's broke. It's always been broke. And it always will be broke…" My mouth was moving of its own accord, but I couldn't care. I couldn't feel anything, except the most wretched sensation of hopelessness that I'd ever known.

"Start speaking sense, Ranger." Captain Lewis ordered, and all I could do was feebly shake my head.

"...I'm no Ranger. Rangers aren't broke…"

I was too overcome by despair to restrain the fear.

"...Zane…" Mary Lewis's watery voice brought a shudder to my breath.

Someone was talking in the background on the other end of Captain Lewis's call. I heard a hand cover the mouthpiece, and for a moment, I was afraid that I'd lost her.

But then, the the scrape of digits dragging across the opposite mouthpiece brought my Captain back to me, and urgency had reinforced her voice.

"I'm sending you a link. You need to see this. And you had better start praying, Zane… You had better start praying that Chris can turn this around." Mary Lewis whispered her own prayer when she told me that.

Three seconds later, a beep on my Tact. pad alerted me to Captain Lewis's uplink, and after I'd peeled the screen from my cheek, I selected the receive notification tab.

A video started playing on my Tact. pad. A video from a familiar studio. A live broadcast being hosted by two familiar faces.

Sitting in the same green sofa that I had previously occupied, was a baby-faced china doll wearing a red leather suit coat and a neon orange scarf. And in the opposite brown sofa, was a salt and peppered black and blue mess, the white of his suit stained red with rivulets of diffusing blood.

Lebreau and Taggart, carrying on the interview that I had excused myself from with a one-sided fistfight.

"You alright there, Taggart?" Chris asked in the jolliest voice you ever did hear, one big boyish smile worn teasingly on his painted face.

"I'm fine. Zane hits like a girl." Taggart slurred his insult, and my knuckles went white on the Tact. pad's reinforced casing.

"Yeah, I know some girls that can hit as hard as Zane can too. Hurts like a sonnova bee, doesn't it?" Chris turned Taggart's macho bullshit against him with a misogynist insinuation.

Little wonder why a handful of women in the audience gave a cheer for Chris.

"He's a rabid animal! No wonder why the Ranger Corps has fallen from grace when they make delinquents like that into Officers!" Taggart countered, and a series of rallying jeers followed.

Taggart's crowd loved it whenever their icon took a shit on the Ranger Corps.

Chris was completely unfazed by the difference in support. Sitting back in the sofa with that pleasant smile, Lebreau raised his waxed eyebrows with a smirk, and lackadaisically indicated Taggart's blood soaked attire with a fluttering fingertip.

"You have something on your shirt, Taggart." Chris teased.

Taggart could only glare at Chris as a chorus of minor laughs sounded from the audience.

"You think?" Taggart spat, as he peeled away the bloody rag on his nose.

"Don't take this the wrong way: but you look pretty comical right now." Chris led his choir with a politely repressed chuckle, and a couple of catcalls aimed at Taggart punctuated the giggles.

"Did you see what he did? I can't believe that happened on a live broadcast. What was Zane thinking? Did he really believe that he could get away with it?!" Taggart drummed up his crowd with the same fiery accusations that had made his show so appealing.

"Yeah, I saw what happened. Anyone with ears could hear it coming. And I honestly can't believe that you did that to a disabled vet." Chris's friendly tone died out to a patronizing disappointment. Taggart's crowd started booing Chris, and their blowhard of an idol puffed himself up with their adoration.

" _What I did?_ What did I do to deserve this?" Taggart asked with that sickeningly smug voice of his.

"Zane might have overreacted, but you deserved at least one punch for framing your interview like that." Chris was unsullied by the loudest jeer against him yet. He sat there on that sofa with a disapproving look at Taggart and an unwavering countenance.

"It's really suggestive that you think that, Chris…" Taggart had finished shooting me to shit, and now he was leveling both of his barrels on my PR agent. And my PR agent could only sigh and shake his head at Taggart's thinly veiled threat, as though Chris were patiently dealing with an ornery child.

"Why did you phrase your question like that, Taggart? My jaw hit the floor when you asked Zane that question. I still can't believe that you swung that low." Chris shook his head as he covered his mouth with a hand, and his eyes widened with exasperation and shame.

"The people deserve to know!" Taggart rumbled with his catchphrase, and his crowd followed it with a warcry.

But there weren't anywhere near as many voices citing Taggart's favor as there had been before. The warcry abruptly cut off to a smattering of off-keyed voices when the mob realized that they weren't screaming with the majority anymore.

"...You're absolutely right, Taggart. The people deserve to know. So I'm going to let them know what you neglected to tell them about all the Rangers who have died around Zane. Starting with Captain Douglas Fitzgerald." Chris's weary voice ended with a resounding hush from the audience. Even Taggart froze stiff in his seat.

"Captain Douglas Fitzgerald was a Ranger of thirty years unbroken service. He served his nation in the Wheezing outbreak that threaten Viridian twenty-three years ago, and he earned the Ranger's Ray and Star for exceptional leadership and commitment to duty during that campaign." Chris paused in his account to let those meaningful accolades set in. A droplet of water splashed against the Tact. pad's screen when I remembered my dearly departed Doug, and what he still meant to me.

"Captain Douglas was one of Viridian's most decorated officers. He answered calls normally reserved for the Black Berets, and he protected his nation and its people with more courage than anyone in this studio could even hope to match. Captain Douglas trained some of the finest Rangers to have come out of the Pewter-Viridian districts during his thirty years of service, and do you know what Captain Douglas Fitzgerald had to say about his final protege, Zane Bastard?" Chris paused again, and glared at Taggart, as if that cunt should've known the answer.

"...Don't you dare, Chris… Don't you dare say it…" I spat through clenched teeth and falling tears as I begged the digitally rendered image of my PR agent for mercy.

" _He's the best goddamn Ranger that I've ever seen."_ Chris let that line rumble out in an emotional baritone, and all I could do was choke on my own short and feeble breaths.

"...Now I'm going to move this right along to an event that occurred earlier this year, during Viridian's Venomoth season, and clarify what happened to the six Rangers who died around Zane during that campaign." Chris carried on after a respectful silence had been observed.

"Zane set you straight on that one. Those Rangers were dead long before Zane had even mustered together his rescue unit. Not one officer in Viridian was willing to lead their troops against a swarm of agitated Venomoth for a handful of doomed soldiers. No one would dare take that risk, except for Zane Bastard." Chris continued with his account.

"Zane went into the dust with a three man unit. The three Rangers who braved the swarm under his leadership came home safe and sound. Eleven soldiers who had been given up for dead found themselves with a second lease on life because of Zane's rescue effort. But one Ranger who went into the swarm didn't walk out of the dust. One Ranger chose to stay behind, when he sacrificed his own environmental protection to save a dying comrade." Chris paused again, and Taggart's frightened eyes were already telling of his defeat. The audience hadn't made a whisper for such a long time now, that the world had completely forgotten about them.

Everyone spectating this broadcast was hanging onto Chris's every word, breathlessly waiting for him to confirm their collective suspicion.

"The Ranger who stayed behind in the dust went by the name of Zane Bastard, and in what can only be described as a miracle, that same Ranger is still with us today." Chris's tone had resumed its air of disapproval, as he fixed his disappointed eyes back on the meek and bleeding Taggart.

"...The Crossed Arms is one of the most honored decorations in the Ranger service. That decoration can only be earned through a meritorious act of self-sacrifice. Most recipients of the Crossed Arms are laid to rest shortly after having received that honor. And that same exemplary decoration was in this very room, hanging from the coat pocket of a Lieutenant Zane Bastard." Chris was capitalizing on the silence by slowing his account down to a weighty crawl. Taggart swallowed his adam's apple, and shifted uncomfortably on his sofa.

"...I have listened to the radio recordings of Echo squad's last transmission. I have heard every terrified and helpless word of Echo Commander Bastard. And even though he was scared absolutely witless of the monster chasing after him and his unit, Zane did everything he possibly could to save his soldiers from certain death. Everything he could to save them from the inevitable. And you have the gall to frame your interview like Zane had murdered them himself…" Chris's voice cracked with a barely contained rage.

"...A beating is better than you deserve, Taggart. I can't believe that you did that to a disabled veteran of our armed forces. I can't believe-" Chris was struggling for words, he was so overcome by revulsion.

"...Indigo Four should nail you to the wall for that. You don't deserve to host a talk show. No one deserves to listen to you scream your hatred and radical journalism at them. And Zane most certainly doesn't deserve to be painted like a criminal by your rating obsessed ego. Zane is more than anything you could ever hope to aspire to. Zane is something that you'll never be capable of matching..." Chris was putting the finishing touches on his speech, and people could already hear the epilogue coming. The audience began to chant and cheer as Chris took a deep breath, and boldly stood up from his seat.

"Zane is a goddamn hero, and you are nothing more than a selfish little insect trying to suck your moment of fame out of him." Chris hissed down to a cowering Taggart, and the audience roared their verdict of this interview now turned fact-check. Chris glared lethal disdain at the tiny little man before him, before my PR agent snapped the mic off Taggart's bloodied coat collar, and dropped it on the stage.

The audience's next cheer was absolutely deafening as Chris turned his back on his defeated opponent, and made off for stage left without another word. Leaving Taggart all alone on his sofa, as his now booing audience began to fling their trash at him.

Even though I presently felt like three different brands of festering shit, some small part of me discovered a sense of satisfaction in how this petty injustice had been resolved.

The live feed cut out to Indigo's Channel Four mother station, and I exited the link before Sanandreas could start working her pretty little mouth.

"Well Zane..." Captain Lewis's voice emanated from the Tact. pad's earpiece.

"...It looks like you lucked out again." Captain Lewis sighed in relief.

"...I owe Fuck-Nutts a drink, don't I?" I could barely manage to speak, I felt so goddamn drained.

"I'll let you make the arrangements. Guess who's ringing on my end?" Captain Lewis actually had a hint of smug in her voice when she switched phones.

"..."

"Yeah, we got him."

"..."

"He's still in one piece."

"..."

"I'll forward you to his call."

I heard a new beep on my Tact. pad, and after tapping the accept call tab, a third voice was added to Captain Lewis's and my exchange.

"...You alright, kid?" Chris asked me with a cautious tone.

"No." I answered truthfully, but there was no strength left in my voice to back that truth up.

"...You scared the hell out of me. I thought you were gonna kill him." Chris shuddered on his end.

I couldn't answer that. There was no comforting answer for that.

"...How's Roscoe's mouth?" I numbly asked.

"It stings." Roscoe's grudging voice sounded from Chris's end.

"...Sorry about that." I muttered, as my shame deepened another shade.

"Eh, no biggie. Lou hits way harder than you." Roscoe grumbled. Chris made a short, nervous laugh.

-Fuck-Nutts actually thought that Roscoe was joking around.

"Chris, we need to start working this out now. How much damage do you think this will do to the mission objective?" Captain Lewis pulled the conversation back into official ground with that dire query.

"Damage? Honestly Captain, I don't think we can reverse the damage. Taggart's nose is most certainly broken. That's not going to sit well with empathetic audiences. But if we play our cards right, then we could totally make this work out to our advantage." Chris halted everyone's breath with that one statement.

"How can we turn this around?" Captain Lewis asked. Chris just started laughing.

"It shouldn't be too difficult. Despite all appearances, that interview went beautifully. Zane did his part perfectly, right up until he jumped Taggart, but even then…" Chris drew an excited breath, and you could hear the gloating in his voice.

"We made Taggart look like the instigator. We made him, _and Indigo Four_ , look like veteran shaming bastards. Mark my words, people are going to empathize with Zane far more than they are with Taggart. Not to mention: Zane punching Taggart's face in is going to attract audiences well outside of both the Ranger's and the League's scope. This is going to be big. I don't think this has ever happened before. A controversial talk show host, getting flogged by a disabled veteran on public media? People are going to watch that interview just to see Taggart flailing on the ground beneath Zane's fists!" Chris was losing his head with a gleeful euphoria. And I was feeling a familiar chill when I considered how my destructive outbursts kept coming back to earn me fame.

"This is the Cerulean Crater all over again! This is going to reach further than we could ever have hoped for! People are going to watch that interview! People are going to hear Taggart's bullshit framing! People are going to see Zane lashing out at a malicious asshole! And people are going to love it!" Chris's giddy voice was doing nothing to stop the sick rising up my throat.

"So how do we play this? What all do we need to do?" Captain Lewis was looking for a contingency, not a prediction of victory. Chris cut the chuckles short, and responded with due recourse.

"I already have my media team cutting up the recording. We're focusing on the most obvious tells of Taggart's angle, and we're going to upload the scene where Zane took the house down before anyone else can. The first set of frames from that scene are positioned squarely on Zane's face. We're doctoring up the footage so that it lags on the first thirty frames. Everyone is going to be able to see the tears in Zane's eyes when he jumps Taggart. Everyone is going to see just how much Taggart hurt him." Chris quickly laid out the first step of his plans.

I was ready to puke. This was just sick. So this was how the media worked: Capitalizing on trauma and skewing the portrayal.

-Was there nothing sacred left on this planet of earth?

"We'll let social media blow it out of proportion for us. I'll be knocking down Indigo Four's front door with a demand for an official apology to both the Ranger Corps and to Zane. I'll play it all up by publicly pressing for Taggart's suspension from public broadcasting. But we need to talk strategy on the Ranger Corps' end. We can't just pretend that this didn't happen." Chris was turning the house over to Captain Lewis, and my Captain already had an idea of what needed to be done.

"Zane will be court martialed for assaulting a civilian. We'll drag out the defense and publicize the development for the media's consideration. It will be a staged tribunal. Zane will be pardoned on all indictments, but we need to make the case look good. I want the media to portray Zane's court martial as an injustice against him. How can we make that happen, Chris?" Captain Lewis shared her hand, and Chris approved of its count.

"Easily. We'll present Zane's defense and Taggart's defense side by side. Taggart is going to start by trying to play the victim, and when he's faced with all the animosity that the public is going to throw at him, he's going to jump straight to the offensive. Then we'll show Zane, taking his punishment with dignity. The media will lap it up, and the public will rally against Zane's tribunal. He'll be cast as the honorable victim, and everyone is going to leap to his defense." Chris gave Captain Lewis her answer, and I was left feeling like a tattered sheet fluttering in the wind.

-Did I get a say in any of this?

"...Can we just put me in a cell, and skip all of the drama?" I asked in a feeble voice, and Chris exploded with a new flurry of excitement.

"That's perfect, Zane! That's absolutely perfect! That's how you're going to rationalize your case! The public will love that! _I did something wrong, and I don't want to make a scene by denying it!_ The public will adore you if you maintain that attitude throughout the case!"

-Maybe I didn't want to have a say in it anymore.

"You magnificent bastard… You know, you have a knack for taking shitty situations and making them work out to your favor. You're a fucking natural at this, kid! You deserve a fucking drink! Meet me up at the Argent Rush! It's a little pub-"

"-I know where it is." I cut Chris off with a long dead voice. Everything went silent on the other ends of my call when everybody remembered that I was new to all of this.

This isn't what I signed up for.

I didn't sign up to deceive and manipulate society.

...I still had a beret on my head because I wanted to defend society.

"I'll meet you there in about forty minutes. We're still pretty busy here, dealing with the aftermath and all, but you're going to get through this with flying colors, kid. You haven't let me down yet, and I am not going to leave you hanging a fourth of the way through. Ciao!" Chris hung up with that little tidbit of coaching, and for some unbeknownst reason, for the very first time since I had been introduced to the asshole…

...I actually found myself appreciating old Fuck-Nutts.

"Zane, you have forty minutes to make yourself presentable. I'll send you a notification of your court martial later tonight. Take a moment to relax. You're gonna make it through this, Ranger. And if you need to talk..." Captain Lewis paused, and took a shuddering intake of breath.

"...Then you know my number is always available to you. Over and out." Mary Lewis spoke softly on her end, right before she ended the transmission.

"...Over and out, Captain." I murmured to my silent Tact. pad.

It had all gone wrong. Again. I'd fucked everything up, just like I always had.

And everyone was scurrying to pick up my pieces, and trying to make something even bigger out of them. Yet again.

-This isn't what I wanted.

I never wanted this.

I'm no hero.

...And I was beginning to question whether I was even a Ranger anymore…

" _...Don't give up on the Rangers, Zane. We need you, kid."_

" _...We need you."_

"Well Doug…" I murmured, lifting my gaze south, across the stormy sea.

"...They have me. I just hope I don't lose them…" I closed my eyes as I remembered Doug's grinning face again. With a shuddering intake of breath, I adjusted my balmoral, and set off north for a familiar establishment.

 _The Argent Rush._

AKA: Lt. Surge's pub.

…

I made the bar ten minutes ahead of schedule. It was still pretty early in the afternoon, so apart from a smattering of early bird regulars, The Argent Rush wasn't exactly abuzz with patrons.

That said, I was still pretty shocked to see two familiar faces at the bar, laughing and conversing like old friends.

One was Fuck-Nutts.

The other was Lt. Surge.

I was still reeling from the outcome of the interview, actively wrapping my emotions up and realigning my head, but the sight of those two dissimilar men jaw-jacking with one another brought me to a stunned pause.

"Zane! You're early!" Fuck-Nutts looked up from his bloody mary, and waved me over to the bar.

"I thought you might want to meet the competition, so I pulled a few strings-" Chris began.

"-Good to see you again, Lieutenant." I curtly nodded to Lt. Surge, completely ignoring Chris.

"Likewise, Lieutenant." Lt. Surge extended a massive fist to my person, and I met it with my own knuckles in a cliched display of brotherhood.

-So much for Chris's pulled strings.

"You two have met before?" Chris sounded legitimately startled.

"Lieutenant Bastard and I have been formally introduced." Lt. Surge leaned back behind the bar with a cheesy grin on his face.

And I played into the formal charade.

"It was a couple of days ago. Been keeping well, Lieutenant?" I asked, a shitty smile worn on my face.

"Never better!" Lt Surge chuckled, before sliding an empty snifter my way.

"The usual?" Lt. Surge asked me.

"Naturally." I replied, and an amber liquor filled my snifter.

"...Well… I'm glad you showed up early…" Chris started on a repressed note, disappointed that his little surprise had been thoroughly spoiled.

"Got somewhere to be?" I asked Chris, my tone more or less friendly.

"Yeah, I gotta get back to my office in Saffron ASAP. Things are moving faster than I anticipated, and I need to get a handle on it pronto." Chris confessed, though he sounded plenty excited.

"...You've even saved me the trouble of mediating the introductions, so I'll just have a quick one with you before the flight home. Cheers, Zane." Chris raised his bloody mary to me, and I clinked my scotch against it. My PR agent made to down the dregs of his drink in one gulp, but Chris hesitated when he noticed that I wasn't doing the same.

"You never gulp good scotch, Chris." I explained, taking a neat little sip from my snifter.

"You do when it's on the house!" Lt. Surge chortled, pouring himself a usual, and sliding the bottle across the bar to my elbow.

"To the best of times, the worst of fights, the hottest of whores, and whiskey without ice!" Lt. Surge raised his snifter with a new salute, and every drink in the establishment went sky-high with a cheer.

"Cheers!" Chris shouted out, as the salute's three man lead downed their beverages.

"Cheers." I grunted, washing my throat with a mouthful of scotch.

Taking a moment to gasp past the burning vodka snaring his esophagus, Chris raised his empty glass to me again, before returning it to the bar with the tab.

-Guess my scotch was the only thing on the house.

"Take care, Zane. We'll be in touch." Chris dared to slap my shoulder with a patronizing gesture, before making his way towards the exit with my glowering eye actively burning a hole into the back of his head.

"Cheeky little fruitcake, ain't he?" Lt. Surge chuckled after Chris had left.

"Everytime he does something to endear himself to me, he immediately follows it up by crossing a line…" I growled, furiously brushing my shoulder off.

"Yeah, showmen are good like that." Lt. Surge grunted, topping my snifter off at the midpoint.

"...I take it you have to deal with them too?" I posed, and Lt. Surge made a guttural sound.

"Not as much as I used to, but every now and then, some ambitious greenhorn makes the mistake of trying to tame me." Lt. Surge rumbled.

"I know your pain." I muttered, taking a lick of my fresh scotch.

"In more ways than one." Lt. Surge grunted, bringing a pause to my snifter's ministrations. I fixed a pair of mismatched eyes on my host, but the man who met my gaze was neither wounded nor apologetic. He wore a hardened expression and bore steely eyes.

It wasn't sympathy that Hewitt Jackson desired or offered. Rather, it was acknowledgement and acceptance that he and I chose to exchanged.

"Still don't feel justified, comparing myself to you." I mumbled into my drink. Lt. Surge just laughed, and shook his head.

"Don't do that, Zane." Lt. Surge's voice carried only the barest trace of his previously expressed mirth.

"Do what?" I asked, my voice cautious.

"Don't put me on a pedestal, and make me out to be some kind of hero." Lt. Surge answered.

-I almost dropped my drink in shock.

"You know what I'm talking about. I know you do. I saw your interview. Heroes don't flog men for insulting their departed comrades. That's what soldiers do." Lt. Surge poured himself another scotch, and leaned his colossal elbows on the bar.

"...I'm beginning to see what Lou meant when she said you and I were birds of a feather. Two sorry motherfuckers who didn't pull out when they should've. Two stubborn assholes who were too afraid of losing what was dear to them, to realize that acting out of fear was gonna take it all away from them anyways." Lt. Surge muttered to his bar.

I didn't have anything to say for the lump in my throat, and Lt. Surge didn't seem inclined to expand on the subject at hand. There was nothing more that needed to be said. That one statement of Lt. Surge's had clarified an understanding. A fundamental understanding between himself and I.

"...So now you're stuck in the League too. Welcome to cell block C, inmate. Make yourself as cozy as your conscience will allow." Lt. Surge grunted, shifting track onto something less emotional.

"Sounds like you hate your job." I mumbled, and Lt. Surge just laughed.

"I fucking despise it." Lt. Surge replied, tossing a towel over his shoulder.

"Twenty years of duking it out in the League's Championships, and you're already at the end of your rope?" I asked, a slight smile worn on my lips.

"Twenty years of this loathsome detail? Has it really been that long? Jesus, I've been wrecking house in the League way longer than I ever fought in the fucking war." Lt. Surge chortled, shaking his head at the bar.

"...So why are you still doing it?" I asked in a quiet voice, and Lt. Surge's eyes rose to meet my own.

"...Why are you still doing it?" Lt. Surge asked me with a knowing look.

The only response I could muster was to deeply exhale through my nostrils.

"...Like Lou said, birds of a feather. You'd think that we would've learned the first time." Lt. Surge spat, and slammed a fist into the bar, jouncing my snifter and the lacquered scotch within.

"...Just over twenty years ago, I was sitting almost exactly where you are now. The hopes of a new generation pinned upon my uniformed shoulders; me, the social catalyst in a grand plan to preserve the security of our nation." Lt. Surge muttered, and raised a hairy forearm to wipe the tip of his nose.

I swallowed hard. I shouldn't have been so surprised to learn that all of this had been done before, but when confirmation was coming directly from the mouth of a prior proponent, thoughts of his untold story filled me with a queasy dread.

"I did my part, before wising up. I got them what they wanted, and they gave me what I wanted. And neither they nor I was remotely happy with it." Lt. Surge whispered as he closed his eyes.

I wasn't going to press Lt. Surge for an elaboration.

-I knew that I'd find out what he meant in good time.

"...Some people take to the life, you know? Some people were born to shine. You paint them with a spotlight, and every inch of them glitters like gold. Some people thrive on that shit, love every second of it. And then you have the other kind of people…" Lt. Surge opened his eyes, and shook his head again.

"...When the other kind of people get painted with a spotlight, all they can do is cast a long and bloody shadow…"

My drink found its way back onto the bar, and my eye stared right through the opposing wall.

Lt. Surge knew that feeling even better than I did, and he knew how to convey that awful feeling with words.

"...But comparing yourself to me? Shit son, you've got yourself some big shoes to fill. You had best find your A game fast, and keep it on the extreme, 'cause you are not allowed to blemish my fucking struggle." Lt. Surge snapped out of it with a cocky smile, and I too fell back on the facade with a laugh.

Neither one of us was gonna fool the other, but we both knew how to wear the masks.

-And there was something of a cold comfort to be found in realizing that.

"...Though if I'm to be perfectly honest, you kinda remind me of another individual when it comes to the League. Hell, when I started out, the media had my back. You though? The media seems to have painted a target on your back." Lt. Surge was still reminiscing, and I was more than happy to entertain an old war horse when he was as good as pouring me a free bottle of scotch.

"Who else had a target on their back?" I asked with a jocular smile. Lt. Surge just grinned back, and an evil glint rose in his eyes.

"Why, Enzo Davinci of course."

I almost fell off my stool, and Lt. Surge guffawed at my reaction.

Being compared to a war hero was an audacious compliment, but being compared to a lunatic hippie-?!

"How the hell do I remind you of Enzo Davinci?!" I damn near shouted out my resentment.

"...Well, you're both goofy little bumblefucks for starters-" Lt. Surge began with that nasty grin of his both vivid and wide, and I could only glare cold murder at his smug face.

"-But more to the point, Enzo didn't exactly have it easy in the League either." Lt. Surge cut the bullshit and resumed a serious air.

"How so?" I asked, still a bit sore after the prior comparison.

"...Enzo has… a colorful history. And not just in the League. Everyone gets dealt raw hands of varying degrees in life, and while both you and I got hit with a pair of pretty shitty hands, Enzo got whipped with a similarly shitty hand too." Lt. Surge settle back against a cabinet on his side of the bar.

"Remember me saying that bit about people in spotlights? Well, Enzo cast one _big_ bloody shadow when they put the limelight on him." Lt. Surge carried on.

"You know him?" I asked, curious as to Lt. Surge's relation to Enzo.

"Not personally, no. We may have been Vermilion's hometown favorites back in the 1,064th, but we only ever met twice in the League. Once when Enzo challenged me for my badge, and then again in the second-quota stage of the seasonal finals. He wasn't anything too memorable in the Gym ring during our first match, but when they pulled all the safeties off that boy in the seasonal finals… Gawdamn, he got scary fast." Lt. Surge's eyebrows lifted in awe with the memory.

"You fought Enzo when he made his move for the throne?" I asked, genuinely interested.

"Fought? Shit, you don't fight Enzo Davinci. You just pray that you meet him on a merciful day, 'cause he's gonna smear your ass across the ring like it's foreplay. How much it's gonna hurt all depends on the day." Lt. Surge laughed on a shudder, before shaking away the heebie-jeebies with a nervous look on his face.

"I'll never forget that fucking fight. I swear Enzo was leading me on everytime I thought I'd secured the advantage, 'cause every fucking time, he turned a no-win situation for himself into a guaranteed victory." Lt. Surge was grinning again, his voice layered with a mix of glee and respect.

"One gawdamn mon. _One gawdamn mon._ Enzo and Tenacious were a match made in hell. Enzo figured every one of us out, called us all on our every bluff, trumped our every ace, unfailingly predicted and countered our every move, and that black dragon of his… Eeeh-fucking-gads…" Lt. Surge fought off another shudder.

"That thing was a fucking surgeon. It knew how to hit, where to hit, when to hit, and it _never_ pulled its punches. Fast as all hell, and stronger than anything else in the finals. It didn't matter how big and tough your mon was, it didn't matter what the terrain was, it didn't matter if you'd claimed the sky, the water, the Distortion, the land and the underground: Tenacious was gonna fucking ruin you, precisely zero fucks given for your upper hand." Lt. Surge seemed to be enjoying this particular memory, and I was curious to learn more about it.

"I've heard about the ol' one-hit-wonder Tenacious. Wracked up the highest kill-count in the Indigo League Seasonal Finals to date." I tossed in what little I knew about Enzo and his infamous mon, fishing Lt. Surge's history for more details.

"That thing was out for blood. Enzo could keep everything but Tenacious's murderlust under control. I honestly don't think that Enzo meant to kill all those mon, 'cause he was apologizing up a storm every time his dragon ripped something's head off." Lt. Surge chuckled to himself.

"I'm surprised that Tenacious didn't kill Enzo. I'll never figure out how that hairy dweeb earned complete and utter compliance from that monster of a dragon." I added my own disbelief to the conversation, and a sudden alertness snapped Lt. Surge back into the present.

"-But that brings me back to my point, Zane. About you and Enzo. Nobody saw Enzo coming. Before the seasonal finals, he was just another starving analyst plying his wits against the League's seasoned vets. Most of the hotshots of the 1,064th had never even heard of Enzo Davinci prior to the seasonal finals. So many prodigies gunning for their Flames, everyone of them sponsored by the League, their names and records worth a fucking fortune in investments… and all of them were brought to absolute shame by a practical nobody who couldn't even be bothered to bring a full deck to the table." Lt. Surge smiled again.

"Enzo kicked my ass, as sure as it's ever been kicked, and I respect him for it. He overcame his own struggle to get where he got, _and he pissed off a lot of people getting there._ " Lt. Surge fixed me with a severe eye, and I offered aught but my rapt attention to this veteran of various battlefields.

"...Do you know what a 'system' is Zane?" Lt. Surge asked me.

 _-_ A system? _Oh, do I ever..._

"Yeah, and I'm getting more familiar with 'systems' every fucking day." I growled the last, none too happy with my own admission. Lt. Surge shook his head in distaste, before carrying on with the lecture.

"Well, the League is a 'system'. Unrealistic motherfuckers think that it's all about coordinating Pokemon battles for entertainment's sake. Just one dramatic fight after another. That ain't even half of the system. That ain't even a fourth of it. That's just for the public allure. The media, the provincial government, the highest rungs of the private sector… They're all invested in the League's system, because the League's system is _damn good_ at making money for its investors." Lt. Surge was a hair away from sounding like a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but I knew where he was going with this.

-Dad had taught me that much about business, right before he booted my ass out the door.

"I'm not saying it's completely rigged, so to speak. There's always openings for up and comers in the League. Afterall, it's good business sense to keep your books flexible. But the League and their investors pick and choose their favorites, and they dump money into those favorites, expecting their investments to pay off tenfold." Lt. Surge was talking a familiar line of dialogue now, and I had an inkling as to where he was taking the explanation.

"...And Enzo crashed their market. He didn't enter the finals with a Silph Co. logo and sponsorship. He didn't have a multi-million Sandz asking price. He didn't put a collar around his neck, and auction his leash off to the highest bidder. He came in with nothing. Just himself, his brains, and _one gawdamn mon…_ And that was all he needed to make every one of those multi-million Sandz sponsorships worth absolute shit." Lt. Surge donned a demeaning grin as he continued.

"All those investments: all that League time, money, and effort for naught. And you have Enzo Davinci to thank for crashing their system." After that statement, I realized that Lt. Surge didn't just respect Enzo Davinci.

 _-Lt. Surge admired him._

"But the market bounced back. I mean, Enzo only competed in the finals for a single season. And I hate to say it, but in the grand scheme of things, a couple million Sandz worth of investment isn't all that big of a loss-" I began on a morale bruising note, but Lt. Surge cut me off with a laugh.

"You're missing the big picture, Zane. True, the market did bounce back, and the wealthy fucks with a couple billion Sandz to spare barely felt the loss, _but Enzo changed the game._ A lot of people give him no end of flak for backing out of the final fight, but they fail to realize that was where he was at his most _genius_. Do you understand what Enzo did when he snubbed Lance in the post-finals?" Lt. Surge was grinning hard.

"...Not really, no." I stated, completely nonplussed.

"Enzo took a shit on the League when he walked out. Left a big steaming pile of shit right under their noses. I don't believe for a second that Enzo bailed for a box of fucking donuts. That was just the icing on the cake for him, forgive the pun. Nobody knows exactly why Enzo pulled out of the League, but when he pulled out, he left a mark. A deep mark. You see, all those investors who'd lost their returns when Enzo stole the spotlight from their favorites? They were slitting each other's throats in the following rat race to get their logo on Enzo's coat. How high do you think the final bid for Enzo's sponsorship was?" Lt. Surge asked me.

"Fifty million." I tossed out a random figure that I found high enough to be considered ludicrous.

-And Lt. Surge just laughed in my face.

"Zane, we're talking about the future League Champion here. Back then, there wasn't a doubt in anybody's mind. Lance was on his way out. One fight was all that separated the Dragon King from his involuntary retirement. Enzo was a blank card, no prior commitments, no former contracts, no strings attached to his person. Do you even know what the League Champion can do in the gawdamn senate?" Lt. Surge asked me, an incredulous look on his face.

"-The Veto." I replied, suddenly realizing the significance of what I'd just said.

"Gawdamn right, the fucking Veto! Now tell me what that, and that alone is worth, without including the Margin Call or related marketable products that come with owning the most influential sportsman in the Indigo Confederacy?" Lt. Surge laid it out in basic verbiage.

"...You can't put a pricetag on that much power." I whispered, praying that I was right.

"The hell you can! Shit, Indigo's ten-sixty-fourth spawned an opposing pair of multi-corporate agglomerates just to get the auction into the six-billion Sandz range!" Lt. Surge was grinning ear to fucking ear when he voiced that terrible revelation.

Was I surprised? Hell no. Disgusted? Absolutely. Worried that something of the sort could happen again, and a group of unscrupulous individuals could secure a solid foothold in my nation's political system?

-I was damn near pissing my pants in fear of what a recurrence of that event could mean for my nation's wellbeing.

"And do you know what Enzo said to the final bid?" Lt. Surge was getting something giddy as he approached the climax. I could only shake my despondent head in numb resignation.

" _-I'll pass. Thanks anyways."_ Lt. Surge quoted, his intonation casual enough to claim takeout.

My jaw dropped to the bar.

-Enzo Davinci had turned down six-billion Sandz _and_ a lofty position of power and fame?!

" _Snubbed them all for a box of donuts! I love that wacky sonuvabitch!"_ Lt. Surge slammed his palm against the bar, cackling his blond head off.

"You wanna talk about heroes?! Enzo motherfucking Davinci is my hero! Just for that! Just for wiping his ass with the best that the League and their investors could offer! The legal fallout of those failed corporate mergers ruined more than one corrupt billionaire! And we're not even talking about how Chimera Industries drove another nail into their system when Enzo's mon became the League's new meta! He's mindfucked the best of the mindfuckers at every interval, and they'll never be able to take his noncommittal ass down!" Lt. Surge drew a deep, calming breath through his grinning maw, and settled back into a levelheaded bartender with one final chuckle.

"That's where I'm going with this, Zane. You've clearly got a cutthroat methodology and an honor code. You've got bundles of brains, mountains of resolve, an unsuspecting degree of charm, and you know how to fight dirty and get away with it. But you belong to the Ranger Corps, and no sales pitch will ever change that. The League looks at you, and all they can see is the second coming of Enzo Davinci. You're not a part of their system, but you're still winning their game. What could you do to Indigo's top caste if you actually took the League Throne?" Lt. Surge had dropped another heavy weight on my shoulders with that remark, yet this was a burden that I could comfortably bear.

Suddenly, I wasn't left feeling like someone else's aimless pawn. Suddenly, I didn't feel like a ship lost at high sea.

Suddenly, I had a clear and distinct goal to aim for, and just as I begun this mission with a grudging confidence in my capabilities…

...So too could I embrace this new destination with that same grim determination.

That clicked. That was exactly what I needed. For so long now, I'd played the soldier's role. Yes sir, no sir, right away sir… I had only just realized that I was adrift without a hand on the tiller or a wind in my sails.

I now knew my bearings. I now knew where I stood in this quagmire. I still didn't have a hope in hell of figuring my way out of it, but now…

...Now I knew where I wanted to go.

"Look kid, the way I see it, there's a chain around your neck." Lt. Surge's voice dipped low for this personal address, and I leaned over the bar to better hear his quiet voice.

"You can let the fucks on the other end of that chain drag you to their destination, you can dig your heels in and fight a losing battle the whole way… Or you can figure out how to turn the leash around, and lead the fucks to _your_ destination." Lt. Surge whispered.

"...Don't be the next Lance Drakengard. He sold his soul when he put that chain around his neck, and permitted them to drag his ass around like a dog. Don't be the next Lieutenant Jackie Surge. He fought for a lost cause his whole life, and now he's too far gone to save. Be the next Enzo Davinci. He at least, was smart enough to pull out before the shit got too deep…" Lt. Surge sighed on the last bit, and this fresh hope of mine wavered.

"We can't pick every battle we fight, and soldiers have always had even less of a say in the matter than most folk; but half of the fight is the terrain, and the other half is the sorry bastard standing opposite you. Use the terrain to your advantage. Challenge the rules; change the game; and conquer the system." Lt. Surge muttered.

"Lieutenant Jackson." I stood up off my stool, my back straight and shoulders tight. Lt. Surge looked up at me with a curious quirk in his eye.

"If I may propose another toast?" I respectfully requested of my host. Lt. Surge responded with a smile and a pair of loaded snifters.

"And what should we drink to, Lieutenant Bastard?" Lt. Surge asked me, raising his drink from the bar.

"To my impending victory in our Gym battle, of course." I replied, lifting my own drink in proposition for the toast.

"To the bush monkey's victory!" Lt. Surge shouted, and every serviceman in the bar sounded out with an awkward off-key cheer.

"To a decrepit old skinhead's retirement!" I shouted, and every serviceman in attendance leapt to their feet, ready to flog this lone Ranger senseless for his heresy and disrespect.

"Hell, I can drink to that!" Lt. Surge roared, slamming his snifter against mine with a toast that sloshed the better half of our drinks across the bar. Downing what was left in our snifters, my host poured a fresh round. That second round tasted even better than the first, and third tasted even better than the second. Come the fourth, we'd both stopped tasting everything but the fumes, and the bemused servicemen had returned to their booths, content with spectating their hero as he proceeded to drink my ass under the table.

And even come the morning after, and the outrageously painful hangover that accompanied it…

...I still couldn't find it in me to regret a damn thing I'd done the previous day.

 ** _-.-_**

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…

 _ **Author's Note:** Oh my God. That wasn't quite as painful to write as I feared it would be. 'Course I'm writing this author's note pre-edit, so there's a possibility of foot-in-mouth coming my way shortly._

 _Hey guys. It's Vile, obviously. Stop reading now if you're already losing interest._

 _...Still reading? Damn, you're almost as boring as me._

 _Anyhow, as promised: here's the next belated installment of TSoK. I know, I know, merry christmas, happy hannukah, blessed bar mitzvah, capricious kwanzaa, whatever. It's the holidays, and no, I didn't plan for a December release. It just so happened that I finally mustered up the courage to take a crack at writing the Interview on one cold and grey winter day._

 _I also wanted to take a moment of your time, time of yours that I'll never return, to express my gratitude to you all._

 _As you may have noticed, I had a bit of crisis going down last update. I may have intimately expressed myself to a gaggle of complete internet strangers, but I felt as though I owed my viewers an explanation._

 _It got a little deep; maybe it went a little too far; maybe it made some people feel awkward as they spectated a literal stranger spilling his guts out in an fanfiction author's note, but I don't regret sharing that with you. At least not overly much._

 _C'mon. It's nothing against you guys. It's just that nobody likes feeling weak._

 _So I've had some time for reflection. So I decided to re-access myself and my place in the world. Not that I really have a "place" in the world beyond any hole that I claim as my own, but yeah…_

 _I took a deeper look at myself, and everything that matters to me, and attempted to explain myself to myself._

 _It's really not as easy as it sounds. I tried to be impartial with myself, but I'm only human. Bias isn't something anyone can so readily disconnect from._

 _I'm not really going into detail about the little trip I took into my own ego, but upon returning from Me-land, I decided that I owed you guys a little more of an explanation. Given the amount of support I've received from like minded viewers, it only seemed fitting that I had another heart-to-heart with you._

 _Fireside talks, except heated with natural gas, not a woodstove. Woodstoves dry out the air no matter how much water you boil, and I don't like waking up to a gushing nosebleed. Or to pillowcases that look like they were used as props in John Carpenter's The Thing._

 _Well… Where to begin?_

 _...How about the story? How about this chapter?_

 _How about this interview?_

 _Yes, I want to discuss this interview. This interview was planned before the plot revision, shortly after TH's introduction and before the Pewter City Gym match._

 _It was something that I was always working on in the background, something that I was always working towards._

 _And believe it or not, Zane punching Taggart in the face wasn't originally planned. That route appealed to me earlier this year, when I first started drafting the interview out. Then I got cold feet, second guessed my writing capabilities, and elected to write AROUND the interview, going as far as to get a healthy start on Book II's Chapter 2, and even writing out Book III's prologue._

 _Which is pretty indicative of my chaotic layout, but then again, writing is a funny exercise. It always starts with an idea; that idea is then given characteristics that amalgamate as a personality; as that idea encounters other ideas, its personality develops and evolves, as the idea reshapes itself in order to persist in the ecosystem that supports it._

 _But that idea and its personality is unique to the individual that conceived it. That personality can only develop so much as an idea. After a certain point, that idea needs to evolve into something new, something a bit more tangible than an idea._

 _That idea needs to develop into a story, otherwise it fades away into the ether of its conception._

 _And once that idea becomes a story, that story is no longer unique to the individual that realized it._

 _That story becomes a world, and that world is there for any who choose to claim it._

 _I've often commented on how TSoK just… wrote itself. How the cast burst into vivid life, and seized the pen from my hands; how the character Zane put me in the corner and ordered me to write his biography…_

 _It's a bit of a romantic exaggeration, but the described sentiment of awe was most certainly present. I don't view TSoK as MY story._

 _...I see TSoK as the story of the characters it introduces._

 _Which brings me back to the interview. When I first conceived of the interview, I was writing a very different TSoK. I wasn't following the political discourse of the US's 2016 Presidential Elections yet, because 2016 was still a year away._

 _When I chose to include an interview in TSoK's narrative, I focused on exploring the Ranger's world, and how it clashed with the rest of TSoK's world. Originally, Taggart was going to list off a fantastical info-dump of historical trends and statistics in an effort to discredit the Ranger Corps, and Zane was going to defend the Corps from Taggart's criticism by listing off his own counter-fantastical info-dump of historical trends and statistics._

 _It was really boring, but at the time, it was what appealed to me._

 _Then 2016 came and went, and suddenly, I couldn't give a shit less about a fantastical debate being carried out by fictitious characters in a bloody fan fiction._

 _Suddenly, I was far more concerned with making TSoK relevant to the real world, than I was with justifying TSoK's world to the real world._

 _The 2016 election was a hard beast to follow. I've never exhausted myself transitioning from terminally depressed to euphoric in the span of an hour, sworn to never watch a presidential debate again, and then repeated the whole process the very next day. I spent days of my life digging into sources that would prove irrelevant months down the line, fact-checking every claim made by every proponent, learning more and more about the future US president, and using that data to determine who was best suited to the role in this modern era._

 _Needless to say, my guy didn't win. Neither did my second pick. As a matter of a fact, two of the worst candidates made both party nominations, and I had to turn to third party nominees just to experience the barest sliver of hope again._

 _As clarified in great detail last update, I was devastated at the outcome. Given the choice between a turd sandwich and a giant douche, I found myself longing for cyanide._

 _But that was then, and this is now. I look back on the whole fiasco as an experience. A mostly unpleasant experience, but there were some genuine glimmers of lasting hope in that cesspool of political fuckery._

 _We may have lost 2016, but so did the victors. It's not like our leadership has done anything to normalize their radical ideology. If anything, all the toxic human beings they dragged up from the depths of society has made it easier to identify the threats to civilization. Pacifists, who were once silent, have discovered that their voices are every bit as powerful as the bigots._

 _And we've also discovered that while there is a sizable community of xenophobic elitists in our culture, they're just the obnoxious minority, too ignorant to realize that the rest of the world shuns them for their prejudice._

 _So let them stir the pot, let them make an even bigger mess. They're only further ostracizing themselves from society. They're only inspiring more people to take a stand against injustice._

 _Hey, we wouldn't try to cure cancer if it wasn't trying to kill us. Human society needs a good hard kick in the tail every once in awhile, just to provide us with motivation._

 _But if you haven't noticed, the events of 2016 influenced TSoK quite a bit. And the interview is just more evidence of that._

 _For those of you naive to the ways of American media practices, I extend to you my warmest envy. I know from raucous discussions held with "sensible" Germans (pre-2016), that both society and its media innately understand what's best for everyone, because social welfare for all is the founding principle of their society._

 _Unfortunately, here in the US… Our media and society aren't quite as sensible as many Europeans are environmentally led to believe._

 _...Obviously._

 _Our media is every bit as corrupt as our politics. Which is abnormally corrupt, as a Dutch friend has repeatedly informed me._

 _I'm sure he's referencing the Netherlands as a comparison. We've still got it pretty good compared to Somalia._

 _If you're remotely curious as to what American society considers valid news, tune in to FOX and watch an episode of Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson. They're both extreme examples, but a considerable portion of our society actually views them as unbiased news sources._

 _I'm not saying liberal media is any better. Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer both possess faces that I'd like to see punched, but they're generally more subtle than FOX's loudmouthed and self-conceited idiots._

 _But this brings it all back to TSoK's Interview, in a very circuitous and disjointed way._

 _I drew inspiration for Taggart's character and his mannerisms from American shock jocks. You can probably detect traces of Bill O'Reilly in his bullshit smug attitude._

 _Zane punching Taggart in the face is a projection of my desire to right a couple of wrongs in the US's media, government, and society; pure and simple. It wouldn't accomplish anything meaningful long-term, and the ones I'd seek to oust would undoubtedly empower themselves with their rabid fanbases, further cementing their roles as the malignant tumors of our society, but..._

 _...You have to admit, it would feel so damn good to see Hannity crying over a busted lip._

 _Which is why Taggart exists; so I don't wind up acting out these less than beneficial desires in real life. Instead, I can create a character who resembles Tucker Carlson. And then I can have another character beat the living bejeezus out of him in an environment where it is legally condonable._

 _...And that was where Taggart's character began, roughly six months ago._

 _It wasn't until Zane actually met Taggart that I realized how wrong I was about my fantastical pursuit of vindication._

 _...Like I said before, TSoK isn't my world. It belongs to Zane, to Theron, to Taggart, to Looker, to Captain Lewis, to Colonel Howes, and yes, it even belongs to Amber; Rest in Peace, you neurotic bitch…_

 _I didn't feel that desirable sense of vindication when I wrote the Interview scene._

 _All I felt was Zane's emotion. All I felt was his confusion and hurt._

 _All I felt was tragedy, not relief._

 _So maybe the projection failed. Or maybe it showed me that exacting retribution is never a clear-cut process. It's not just anger followed by instant relief. There's a whole lot of emotion between the epoch and the conclusion._

 _I should've already known this, given how long I've been on this earth, but sometimes we need to learn the same lessons in different schools to truly understand what it is we're being taught._

 _Maybe punching someone in the face would feel vindicating to spectate, but to be the aggressor in such a situation?_

 _I think I know better now._

 _And this kind of experience, this kind of lesson learned in the development of a story?_

 _That's the entire reason why I write._

 _You can learn a lot about yourself, and the world that surrounds you in writing. So much to the point that I feel obligated to admit that I'm not a Doctor of Zoology, a licensed Geologist, or a Quantum Physicist; as flattering as some of you people's curiosity has been._

 _I only developed a (very, very, very basic) understanding of zoology and Quantum Physics because of my interests in literature. Because I have an obsession with testing plausibility._

 _Because I'm never satisfied with the first answer to "why."_

 _So a PhD wielding fanfiction author I am not._

 _And this in turn, brings me to why I've chosen to share this long-winded and messy Q &A reflection with you._

 _Because I want you to write._

 _No pressure implied; no need to take me overly seriously. I truthfully enjoy writing. I've learned more through writing than I ever did in school._

 _But my goal in life, the reason for why I continue to live after I've relinquished all fear of death, has been obscure to me for so very long._

 _Long story short, I live because I have nothing better to do; and while I still live, I intend to enjoy myself as much as I am able._

 _In getting to know myself a little better over the years, I've discovered that I not only enjoy learning, but teaching as well._

 _One of the greatest pleasures I've had on this site, isn't perusing the poorly written hatemail in my account inbox for a cheap laugh, surprising as that may sound._

 _It's been offering assistance to writers in need, be it proofreading, providing criticism, or just getting those creative juices flowing by bouncing ideas off each other._

 _It's awed me to no end, watching correspondents develop in both their literary styles and interests, seeing badly written slash fics transcend into lyrical novels. And more often than not, I didn't have to teach them jack. They just discovered it in their own way, same as I did._

 _You guys know who you are. No, I haven't forgotten about any of you. Silence is just my preferred MO._

 _But I want everyone who has a story to tell, to take just a moment to write a verse, a paragraph, a chapter, a character bio…_

 _...Introduce yourself to your own idea. See if it grows and develops independently of you._

 _Then see if it too, seizes the pen from your hands, and writes its story for itself._

 _It's an incredible feeling. It's a fantastic adventure._

 _It can be a life-altering event._

 _If I could share one thing with the world, if I could give one thing to every man, woman, and child on this planet…_

 _...It would be that feeling of wonderment you'll only ever know, when you watch your dreams come to life._

 _Thank you, for your continued interest in this story. This is Vile Slanders, wishing you all a holiday-jingle free season. Bah-humbug._


End file.
